STARS-verse Dreamcast

It's always fun imagining who could voice the characters in your works. :-D 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.

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

"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 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.

"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' characters/or characters made by popular fans. Back when I was posting a 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 in the right hands, 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.

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 (or Margaret Thatcher?) 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.

Predatory Drift commentary & notes

Story summary: Infinite the Jackal goes up to Antoine and asks him "Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?"

REFERENCES:  

Predatory drift is a real biological phenomenon that occurs in dogs. I first heard about it years and years ago in a National Geographic show (I think; if it wasn't Nat Geo, then it was Animal Planet) in reference to a pack of Russian street dogs that were shown hunting a cat (I'm no animal expert, but I kinda think they were doing that just because they were hungry). What I've read online made it sound more like the dog could just be up there playing or walking around or whatever when they suddenly switch into this predatory drift. 

It doesn't seem like it affects every dog -- the dogs my family had back when I was growing up never displayed any behavior of this sort. They were all small breeds (two of which were shih tzus). But I had a coworker tell me about the time her shih tzu once stalked, killed, and ate a bird. AFAIK this was a house pet, not some starving stray dog. Wild stuff. So it seems like it can happen to any breed, but it's just more dangerous if it's a medium/large dog that can actually do some damage. It's honestly why I'd be very careful when having a small dog interact with a large one.

Anyways, my nerd brain went "Maybe I could use this predatory drift thing for one of my anthro fandoms", and filed it away for later use.

GENERAL:

- This is the first holiday-inspired fic I've ever written! I had two sources of inspiration:

1.) I knew somebody who said they were working on a Sonic story. One of the things they wanted to have happen was Fiona Fox trying to tempt Antoine over to her side by appealing to his predatory instincts. I (privately) turned to a friend of mine's and told them that this person was probably never going to do anything interesting with that idea, if indeed they actually even went through with writing the whole story at all (I was right, they didn't). I've chanced over any number of fanfics/or ideas before where a writer will inadvertently create an interesting situation with a particular character, but then either fail to follow through or don't want to be bothered to do so because the character(s) either doesn't interest them enough or they dislike them. Some people are just lazy/or simply don't know how to pick up a plot point and carry it.  

So I decided to do something with the idea myself, only minus Fiona because I can't stand that character. The idea wouldn't work in Guardians Of Acorn because that Antoine actually has a support system in place that would ultimately keep him from doing what PD!Antoine did. I kept the idea in mind however, still wanting to use it for a fic. 

2.) A piece of fan art for the movie Lady And The Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure, where you can see the Angel character holding the leash of another dog in her mouth. She's pulling it back towards a bush, and behind her you can see Buster and a pack of other dogs waiting with these creepy whited-out eyes. I've been trying to track this picture down so I could link to it here, but haven't been able to find it. So if anybody out there knows what I'm talking about, then please link it to me. 

Anyways, I don't even like the movie in question (an understatement), but it is a very striking image. The juxtaposition of having a cute, innocent-looking character seducing someone into a bad situation as significantly more sinister figures, their comrades, watch hidden in the background is just really fascinating to me. I just imagine a Sonic-verse version of this with Antoine in Angel's place and Infinite and the rest of the Jackal Squad looking on behind him. 

So, every now and then I'll watch videos about Sonic-related topics on YouTube if they catches my eye. Well, I started watching one about Infinite the Jackal one day. The creator was a fan of his, and before I knew it, he got me interested in the character as well. He looks cool and he sounds cool, but it doesn't sound like he was utilized all that well in Sonic Forces, and they haven't used him in anything since. :( 

Then it hit me -- why not a story where Infinite takes notice of Antoine and think he'd be a great way to get at Sonic and the other good guys by playing on the fact that both he and Antoine are predators/canines and Antoine's outsider status? I typically don't like stuff where Antoine is a traitor or whatever just because it's very obvious the writer is going this route because they hate his character, but in this case, I thought I could make this into an interesting psychological horror story.

- Let me be clear, I don't like the whole predator/prey thing the way the internet has treated it for the past several years now. You got people who saw Zootopia who seem to actually think it's a literal wildlife documentary. I sincerely wish I was joking. I don't like the whole "predators are stand-ins for minorities" thing, I think it's very silly. Leave it at the internet to take something that could potentially be very complex and strip it of all nuance and thoughtfulness. I think prey animals are well within their rights to be wary of predators, especially in settings where they are more animalistic. I mean, have y'all seen what Cape hunting dogs do to their prey? And this is coming from someone who thinks they're cool animals. 

Then there are the weird furries who make the "I'm a furry/predator" thing their whole identity and lifestyle -- that's extremely annoying. I'm sorry, but I don't believe in encouraging people to just wholly immerse themselves in fantasy worlds instead of just dealing with real life and their problems. That's not healthy (also, I get very tired of being told to respect furries like this when a number of them rank up there as being some of the most disrespectful, judgmental crybullies I've ever had the misfortune of meeting -- right up there with Karens and the like).

But I'll discuss all that further when I get around to posting another one-shot in the future that also deals with predatory and prey animals.

- It's kinda funny, but I got two unpopular canine characters interacting with each other here. :D Granted, I do think Infinite has a bigger fanbase, or at least more people have a more positive attitude towards him, as opposed to all the folks who act like Antoine personally stole their girlfriends and murdered their nanas.

- The appeal of this whole idea to me personally is this -- a character like Antoine, someone who dresses and behaves like a noble gentleman, rediscovering his wild roots and exploring that. The person I mentioned above who'd devised the Antoine/Fiona thing also talked about Antoine's innate instincts (as well as Tails) being suppressed due to living around so many non-carnivores. Which is also interesting, but again, it didn't seem like that was going to be actually explored in the hypothetical story that was never written. Honestly, that idea could've been tackled by just having Antoine and Tails feeling dissatisfied or unhappy, not understanding why, so they both set out together to discover what the issue behind this could possibly be. Boom, you got a potentially interesting plot and character development right there. But I find that I'm way more interested in digging into characters' psyches and developing them, rather than being super self-indulgent like a lot of fans tend to be. I mean, my stuff can be self indulgent, but I also try to marry that with interesting storytelling rather then just stuff like "My favorite character collected all the Dragonballs/Chaos Emeralds/whatever and is now the most powerful, sexiest being in the universe!"

- Yes, walruses and foxes are not herbivores either. But foxes can be omnivorous* (plus, Tails is just a child), while I think an animal that largely eats things like shellfish can still fare better than a canine in Antoine's situation could. Apparently walrus bulls however will kill and eat seals on occasion, but Rotor's probably not going to be running around trying to stab somebody with his tusks anytime soon.

*Yes, coyotes can be omnivorous too, just like dogs, but being carnivores obviously prefer meat. You cannot feed canines a vegetarian diet because they can't get the proteins and such that they otherwise would get from meat.

- Very obviously I was just mushing together different bits of Sonic canon. We have Eggman, not Robotnik, Tails being a more active member of the team as opposed to his role in SatAM, Nicole is just a handheld computer, and no Bunnie/Antoine shipping.  

- Generally I depict Antoine as being part coyote, part dog. But since I wanted to get people interested in PD and avoid confusion, I decided to keep him a pure coyote.

- Dog imagery and references are rife within the story, very intentionally.  I think my favorite of them is this line: But that word – dog – did something. It rolled around his head, got teeth of its own. And compare Antoine's house pet vibe to Infinite's wild, feral dog vibe.

- A couple of major elements in the story are deliberately left vague or up to readers' interpretation. How much of what happened was actually due to Infinite/or his beacon? Or did he light the spark and Antoine just did the rest himself? It's entirely up to the readers. Sally's fate is also left ambiguous. 

- The line "You see me now, don't you?" was originally "I told her I would guard her." I thought the former hit a little harder.

FUN FACTS:  

- Since it was Halloween, I thought it'd be pretty fun to experiment with writing in a style evocative of certain popular horror authors, more specifically Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Ray Bradbury. 

Prior to this, I'd never read a Clive Barker book before or seen one of his movies the whole way through, though I was aware of who he is. I listened to the Midnight Meat Train on YouTube after watching the trailer for the movie adaptation on Tubi, and decided I really like his writing style. I don't mind audio books, but do find that I prefer to either read something on a screen or actually hold a physical book. So I'll probably see can I find the physical book at my local libraries. 

Pretty much have known who King was since forever. I'll go more in depth into my history with his work in a future post, since one of my future one-shot ideas involves a certain character of his.  

My first encounter with Bradbury was watching The Halloween Tree on broadcast television back in the '90s. Listened to a short story of his on YouTube, The Wind, and thought it was pretty good. My ultimate goal is to see Something Wicked This Way Comes (Disney turned it into an awesome-looking movie that I don't think a lot of people even knows exists) as well as read the book it adapts. 

I'm always in the market to read something by any of these three writers.

- While writing this, I listened to some music to get myself in the right frame of mind -- the soundtracks for The VVitch, Wolf, and The Shining, as well as the "Patricide" instrumental from Gladiator for the attack scene (that's not a horror movie of course, but that music/scene instantly sprang to mind while plotting out that particular part in the fic). All four very good soundtracks. I admit I didn't fully realize the role The Shining's soundtrack plays in that film, because it really is discordant and eerie to listen to even by itself. Ennio Morricone described visualizing Wolf's soundtrack as a man experiencing a "dark dream". I also wanted parts of PD to have a dream-like quality. I also had general seasonal ambience music going in the background for mood.

'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.

Imposter Syndrome commentary & notes

REFERENCES: 

- Imposter syndrome refers to a real psychological condition where a person feels anxiety and self-doubt because they basically believe themselves to be frauds and worry about being exposed as such, even though their skills, success, relationships, etc are genuine. I thought it was a fitting title.

GENERAL:

- If you've watched Trollhunters then you'll know why TK reacted so strongly to Otto calling Patamon a cat. XD

- Trollhunters is one of those things that has some cool ideas, but gets bogged down by a lot of goofy writing and cringe/or childish humor, among other issues. I'm actually glad I didn't get any further into the Tales Of Arcadia spinoffs, because it sounds like the whole thing drops even further in quality (IE: the one show with the two aliens and the infamous finale movie).

The Changelings are one of the most interesting elements in the series. I do think they're... well, stupid in terms of their capacity for self-preservation though. They seem perfectly content in following a leader who cares nothing for or respects them, and is openly blatant with his disregard for them, to the point of following him to their own literal destruction in the end. 

Better the devil you know, I guess. I feel this is the sort of environment Changeling!T.K. would look at, then look over at the Chosen Children, and decide he'd much rather give his loyalty to the latter. Also, if you're a Changeling and you fail some sort of mission you're given, the boss will literally eat you. Strickler was the only Changeling who was not okay with any of this (something I think should've been explored further), and even he did a lot of stupid things (though that was more tied to his antics as a villain).

Actually, upon further reflection, I feel like the Changelings both as characters and concepts were wasted. Many of them get killed off the end of the first season.

- I do like that air of mystery that the Changelings still have about them to this day. All we really know about them is that they are trolls the Gumm-Gumms and Morgana La Fay took and altered somehow (it's never stated exactly how). They're linked to a human infant who's been previously abducted, and they take on that human's form and proceed to live their life. I know troll!Enrique wasn't a character that we the audience were meant to really take seriously, but his presence just raises more questions. I assume the Changeling would have grown in size as he grew up as Enrique, but do trolls not have an infant stage, or the infants already able to speak and have adult cognizance? Or is that just something limited to Changelings? Were the trolls that were experimented on young ones, or adults? 

But yeah, I admit to enjoying having some mystery about certain canon elements in a work of fiction. It is cool to see canon explore some things (Godfather II delving into Vito Corleone's backstory, for example), but not so much when it feels like they're just shoveling mounds of crap at viewers. Like I think Ixis Naugus's backstory in the original Archie Sonic comics is hella goofy and just kinda lame. It added nothing to his character and he might as well have just retained his mysterious past.

- The idea of doing a Trollhunters crossover where some good guy actually turns out to be a Changeling in disguise has always floated around in my mind after reading this story. ETA: My bad, I didn't actually share the link. Initially I was going to do a Disney/Trollhunters crossover, but none of the Disney properties I looked at really worked for me. Then one day, Digimon just popped into my head as a good candidate for the other fandom. It just came down to picking which season to use. My top two choices were either the Adventure continuity or Frontier (which is flawed, yeah, but I still really like it. Might be a nostalgia thing).

- I'm going to hold off on doing a character analysis for T.K. for now. I haven't really seen the entirety of Adventure or Adventure 02 in years. I did rewatch some of both seasons on Hulu recently (more Adventure then 02 though). I will say that I quite enjoy the character as he is in Adventure, but in 02 the now older T.K. often radiates this smug golden boy vibe that kind of puts me off him. And the show just kind of leans into it too. When it came to IS, my thought process went to "wouldn't it be funny if somebody that perfect was hiding something?" Looking at both seasons of Digimon through the lens of "what if TK was a Changeling the entire time?" adds a interesting element to things.

The story isn't really about Patamon per se, but looks at both his and T.K.'s relationship, so I don't know if I should do an analysis on him as well, or if I do, just combine his with TK's.

- I would love to see the Gumm-Gumms' reactions to the partner Digimon (especially Gatomon) and seeing them digivolve. Actually, I'd like to see how Jim and co would react as well. 

FUN FACTS:

N/A

"Loyalty" commentary & notes

References:

- The plot is based around the Ultimate Spider-Man episode "Second Chance Hero". Shocking, I know.

General:

- I wanted to write something about Norman and his son. A little while ago I decided to try looking for some Norman-centric fanfics on Fanfiction.net. There were none. And one fic I came across depicted him as an incestuous pedophile. If there had been a bunch of positive stories about him out there Loyalty would've been written regardless, but the fact that it's the exact opposite situation just gave me extra incentive to write it.

I'm a fan of the daemon concept that's presented in the books that I'm crossing over with Ultimate Spider-Man here, the His Dark Materials series, not so much the rest of the books (which I suspect is the case for a bunch of people, because when I typically see HDM crossovers, they usually just use the daemon concept and that's all). I liked the first and even the second book as a kid, but the third one really confused me at times and turned out to be my least favorite entry. As an adult, I don't like any of them. 

ETA: Okay, let me go more into why I don't like this series. I don't recall much of the third book, The Amber Spyglass (thankfully), something I can't say for the first two books. 

Stuff I distinctly do remember about it? Well, it had big (excuse my French, but this is the most fitting description I can give) "Screw you mom/dad/grandma, stop showing the pastor my Twitter account!" energy. Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are both despicable characters; they did not deserve redemption. Oh, and Will and Lyra having sex, and that saves the multiverse. 

Will and Lyra are twelve years old. Mmm-hmm.

Looking at reviews for The Amber Spyglass over on Goodreads, I saw critics make some excellent observations. One I'll share here is that Philip Pullman doesn't seem to be anti-religious. He just rejected organized religion and replaced it with a religion he made up for HDM, topped off with some New Age woo. Angels, Dust, witches, daemons clearly represent souls... those are all concepts either from or inspired by religion. If you're allowing room for the supernatural to exist, then you're opening up the door for just about anything, and that includes God.

All that said, the idea of having your personality be represented by a talking animal (I headcanon that they also represent one's subconscious) is a really cool idea. So I figured why not toss two things I like together? It's really fun to think about what kinds of daemons our favorite characters might have.

Fun facts:

- Daemon talk time. I'm pretty sure some people choose animals simply because they like them and think they're cool, not because they actually fit a certain character. For example, I saw a fic once where Harry Potter had a husky daemon. Now, I'm not even an HP fan and don't feel like a husky is really appropriate for him. I don't know what kind of animal he'd have, but husky seems like it was picked simply because the writer liked them.

I also think HDM is too on the nose about daemons."OMG that person has a rat/polecat/snake daemon so they must be the evulz!" "All servants have dog daemons, so that means they're born to serve others!" Wow. So if you wanted to be an archaeologist and your daemon settles as a dog, boom, that's it, you have to go work as a maid or something instead? What? What's up with these British children's books authors treating classism as something perfectly natural and even acceptable? HDM, Redwall, Harry Potter... I'm sure people can toss me some more titles. Even "evil animals" have their good qualities, and the reverse likewise goes for the "good animals". For example, rats are adaptable and pretty smart. Wouldn't things be more interesting and nuanced if a totally normal person had a rat daemon, and they had to go through life being side-eyed simply because his/her daemon happens to be a rat? So I really don't even like how Philip Pullman handles his own concept.

- Onto why the USM characters got the animals that they did in here. Right off the bat I knew Norman's daemon was going to be something predatory. On a whim I looked up the symbolism of the cougar as a totem animal at What's Your Sign.com, It's traits are said to be action, strength, nobility, patience, silence, decision, leadership, guardianship, and self-assurance.

Puma meaning (as well as symbolism of mountain lions or cougars) speaks to us of inspection, observation and scrutiny. In the wild, this creature will stare at an object, unmoving [sic], for what seems like an eternity. Further, she does this with stillness, patience. To those of us who heed the puma as a guide, we would take great care to observer our own lives with the kind of intese [sic] focus the puma does.



People who have identified the puma, mountain lion, and/or cougar as their animal totem are people who typically come into this world with a spiritual knowing. Those who attract this animal totem have a deeper understanding of spiritual things. They are very psychic, intuitive, and are likely to be artistically inclined.

Furthermore, the puma is a very protective energy. If you have this creature as your animal totem, you are blessed to have such a fierce and aggressive guardian with you. When called upon you will be amazed at the resourcefulness and assistance the puma meaning can offer.

In closing, it is important to recognize the puma and it's relatives are cats of sudden, vigorous action. This being the case, those who share the puma as their totem should be mindful of their tendancy [sic] to lash out too quickly, or act out in haste. Call upon the patience and observation of the puma before taking action in order to avoid quick and unsavory consequences. 

Sounds quite a bit like Norman to me.

Harry's daemon was hard to pick. He's sort of generic I guess, and they didn't develop him as much as I thought they could've. I do like him more here then I have in other continuities. I've never disliked him, but he was never someone I got excited about or anything. I think the "rich kid who tries to buy friendship and isn't that great at school" approach has more potential then "he's a geek like Peter too!" I did consider all his qualities before deciding that his loyalty, especially to Norman and his hopes for their relationship to improve, was noteworthy. So Harry was going to have a dog, which, in the world of HDM, would be a startling choice for someone from such a privileged background. I thought I'd play around with the silly "only servants have dog daemons" deal. That choice also helped the story come together.

But what breed of dog? Right off the bat I said no to the German shepherd, the Siberian husky, or anything husky-like due to their overexposure, the husky/spitz types especially, and just being overrated in general (JUST MY OPINION PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME DEATH THREATS). Sighthounds can be very lazy dogs, but when it's time to go, they can go. Sounds like Harry to me. I picked the whippet over it's more well-known cousin the greyhound.

Since Norman's father Amberson was a horrible person in the comics, again, I went with an intimidating animal, the European eagle owl.

Spider-Man gets a spider monkey! It might be uninspired, but I wanted an animal that could keep up with him all over the city and be easy to get around with. Plus, I think a monkey matches his personality. I don't know exactly how old Peter and Harry are off the top of my head, but I do think they're old enough to have settled daemons.

- Several of the daemon's names in HDM canon have a special significance behind them. It's no coincidence that both Osborns' daemons have names starting with the letter A. Astrakhan comes from a book I'm reading about pre-Communist era Russian rulers, and is a city in that particular country. Astra is Latin for "star", and Khan refers to a ruler in Turkic and Mongolian culture. It sounded like a good strong name for Norman's daemon.

I can't recall how or why I chose Aloisa, but it means "famous warrior".

That's pretty much it. My next HDM fusion will more then likely either be about the USM version of the Rhino or Big Hero Six.

ETA: I would like to revisit the "What if some fictional characters had daemons?" concept again!

"To Catch Up With The Sun" Chapter Three notes

REFERENCES: 

N/A

GENERAL:

- I went ahead and made Esteban's Elena regent here. Since Elena has not been officially crowned as queen at this time, realistically, he should be her regent. When he was reflecting on his circumstances at the start of this chapter, Esteban wasn't blowing smoke -- in the real world, nobles really didn't have very many options available to them. The following info comes from someone I was speaking to about this subject:

• They were not allowed to own businesses because it was viewed as "disgraceful", and was even illegal in some places. So either Luisa won't be an aristocrat here, but just someone who comes from a wealthy family, or I dump the chocolate shop thing or whatever it was she had in canon.
  
• They could join the clergy, but that came with issues of its own (what kinds of issues I'm not sure of though), especially if you lived in a Catholic country. 
• They could look pretty and sponge off their relations who did have money. XD
• If they couldn't support themselves or if no one else was willing too, they'd be dirt-poor and turn to things like literal mercenary work, subsistence farming, or even banditry. And most nobles would apparently turn to brigandry before "breaking caste" and shaming themselves by opening up a business. 

So someone like Esteban would be expected to either govern a fief, take on an administrative role within their country's government (like he's presently doing), or join the military, and be a model noble at the same time. The following is something else I was told and which I thought I'd share here:

"I do want to observe that nobility has nothing to do with wealth or power, everything to do with blood and/or title. A noble could be dirt-poor, and a commoner be running the kingdom behind the scenes. (And the noble would probably still look down his nose at the commoner.) Though on the other hand, commoners who gained wealth and influence were often given (or purchased) noble titles."

- I'll discuss the new Grand Council more and why I chose to adjust the membership later on, as they'll officially debut "on-screen" in my upcoming story (hopefully. If I can make it not feel shoehorned).

- Have another shout-out to Sofia from Sofia The First, courtesy of Elena and Esteban! Anytime anyone brought up an issue with the character of Elena on the EoA subreddit, a number of the stans there were quick to yell, "Oh yeah? Well, look at what a Mary Sue Sofia is!" and just trashing her. To me this just felt like them trying deflect all criticisms of Elena, no matter how reasonable and constructive they were. The subreddit didn't used to be that way, and I'm not sure why it turned into such a hivemind of rabid fanatics who flipped out anytime you went, "I liked that episode, but it could've been better." And IMHO, yeah, as STF went on, things with Sofia did get to be a little too much, but what saves her character for me is that she continued being likable.  

But yeah, all the salt made me make sure to give Sofia lots of praise for rescuing Elena and helping to restore Avalor. ;) Plus, the Flores totally seem like the kind of people who'd feel really grateful towards Sofia and her family. Think about what would've happened if Sofia hadn't been called to Avalor. I'm guessing the rest of the fandom doesn't have a weird hateboner for STF, because I do recall seeing a bunch of STF/EoA crossovers on FF.net before. Heck, I'm hoping to do a few in the future myself.

- I'd be all too happy to explain what I was going for with Elena's behavior in the scene where she gets overly excited about seeing birds and the sky (which I suspect put off two readers. ETA: You know, now I have a sneaking suspicion about why one of them reacted the way they did, but I won't get into it here). My line of thought is that having been stuck inside the amulet for that length of time has messed with her head some. Now, she's finally free and gets to see all the things she's missed -- nature and everything else -- again. So yes, she is a bit loopy, but it's not gonna be a permanent thing. By the time the sequel takes place, she'll be more like the Elena we see in the cartoon. It's just my own conjecture, since EoA never discussed what it was like for her in there. I thought it'd be really interesting if there were actually some repercussions or side-effects from that whole experience. Heck, I'm just spitballing here, but maybe she has claustrophobia now.

- Yes, I think Esteban would be facing some citizens who don't quite trust him. In their minds, he was Shuriki's willing right-hand man.

- Man it was hard to end this thing. And it did feel weird, because as events in the show progressed and I heard about what was going on, it seriously dampened my enthusiasm for any protagonist not named Esteban, Francisco, or Isabel. I do feel that by admitting to that here and elsewhere in this blog, if anything even remotely troublesome happens to the rest of the cast in my upcoming fics, some people are going to automatically assume malice on my part towards them. I've seen readers flip when somebody wrote a Pokemon fic in which Ash caught a cold and accused the author of bashing him. Let me emphatically state that I don't believe in character bashing, even of characters I personally dislike. I try to be fair towards them and show that they're human too. And I felt like I was being pretty fair towards the other EoA characters here. 

At other times, if I don't want to be bothered with characters I don't care for or don't need them for anything, they'll either "be on vacation/visiting elsewhere/busy with work/etc" ("Where's Luisa?" "Oh, her nephew took sick, so she's off visiting!"), or I bring my preferred characters around characters that I do like/or don't mind, like I will do with Esteban in my My Little Pony and Disney crossovers. Problem solved.

This goes for anything I write in.

FUN FACTS:

- For my storyverse, I knew I wanted to give Esteban some more hobbies, since he didn't have very many in the show. I immediately landed on the idea of him being an equestrian, since it's something I don't think a lot of people believe he'd like. I've seen a screencap of him with a black horse, but aside from my not knowing what the context of that image is, I have no clue what EoA has him thinking about them or if he can even ride/do so well. Now, I headcanon that if EoA took place in modern setting he'd be a car aficionado (sports cars specifically), but since cars don't exist in canon proper, it'd only be practical for him to know how to ride horses. I thought it'd also be a good way for him and Elena to bond. AFAIK, he didn't have a horse in the show. But I noticed I just enjoy giving my protagonists pets or other creatures to bond with, or giving them a fondness for animals/or certain animals. So in this setting, Esteban isn't simply limited to just being a shipping tool, a "bad guy", or Elena's stuffy ass of a cousin. He is totally capable of forging a loving bond with a "lower animal". 

Atrevido (his first horse) means "daring" in Spanish, while Arpegiar is a musical term: a type of broken chord in which the notes composing a chord are sung or played in either a rising or descending fashion. 

Prior to the film Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron, I'd never heard of a buckskin horse before. It's such a striking color pattern. So that's why Arpegiar is a buckskin. Initially he was going to be a breed of horse called a paso fino, which originates from South America if I'm remembering rightly. Then I went to YouTube to check them out in action:

This is their natural gait. Gorgeous animal, but that is not a horse meant for stealth. If Esteban ever wanted or needed to sneak off for whatever reason, he'd probably be better off just leaving the horse at home, lol. So I just went ahead and made Arpegiar an andalusian horse instead. I doubt Canela actually is a lusitano in canon or not, but both her and Arpegiar's respective breeds are sometimes referred to as "Iberian horses." The lusitano hails from Portugal, while the andalusian is Spanish.

Oh, and I guess this is my headcanon on how Elena got Canela. Isabel doesn't seem like she'd really care about horses. I do remember liking the fact that she enjoys drawing though.

- Meet some more of the Flores' servants, Antonio, the (only named) stable hand! I figured it'd be both realistic and kinda funny to give Gabe some competition for Elena's attention. Of course, Esteban cockblocks him too. XD

"To Catch Up With The Sun" Chapter Two notes

References:

- The title of this chapter again comes from a line in the song "Time" ("Home, home again, I like to be here when I can"). The idea is that the palace hasn't felt like home to Esteban in the longest time, but with the return of his family, it's beginning to feel that way again.

General notes:

- I didn't discuss this the last time, but I wanted to explain why I made the choice to write TCUWTS in second person perspective. It's thanks to being inspired by this Steven Universe/Kim Possible crossover, Sky Blue, Ocean Blue. Apparently it isn't a very popular style with some people, but I personally found it to be really interesting and engaging. Second person perspective has a more intimate feel to it, and with the story delving so deeply into Esteban's life and why he is who he is, I wanted to try it out for that specific reason. I did try avoiding the usual mistakes people make with both this and first person POV; I.E.: having Esteban know stuff that he has no business knowing. Everything is entirely from his perspective, so yes, that means that some moments and things are colored by his opinions/thoughts/etc. He can only guess at how someone else is really feeling. The next story in this series will be in one of the assorted third person POVs, I promise.

- I know nobody in the show ever considered the possibility of Shuriki surviving, and some people might think it's too much for Esteban to worry about her still lurking around (whereas we see in the final chapter Elena being very dismissive of the idea), but considering the fact that she destroyed his life, he's seen what her magic is capable of, and her body not turning up, yes, I can see him being that paranoid. 

Also, I think Shuriki would've, for all intents and purposes, made Esteban feel like a hostage in the palace. In the real world, there's been cases of kidnappers holding their victims hostage for years, and overtime feeling comfortable enough to start allowing them a little more freedom.

- Initially I was really confused as to why Shuriki would leave the portrait of Isa and the grandparents Flores just hanging there in the throne room. If she wanted to leave it there just to screw with Esteban, then why hide it? It took my going to the Disney wiki to learn that Alcazar magicked it so that it couldn't be moved or tampered with. Okay, that's perfectly fine as an explanation, but I never would've known that because EoA never stated that anywhere in the show AFAIK. You think that would've been explained or come up at some point.

- I guess the other Floreses (... would you say Floreses? Flori, lol?) never thought to ask about Victor after they returned in the show. Neither they nor Esteban seemed too shocked to see that he had a kid either when he popped up again.

- The show itself and sites like TV Tropes make it seem like Shuriki put Esteban to work running Avalor all by himself. Realistically though, he would not have been the only person doing every single job. Running even the smallest kingdom can be tough and complex, which is why royalty have people working under them to help, such as Tomas (Victor's pop per my setting), and they in turn have people who work for them. This is partly why I brought in Rodolfo as Finance Minister.

- Yes, I do believe that out of the entire family, Esteban is closest to his grandfather. We got that one scene in the show where Esteban and Francisco were hanging out watching the olaball game together (with Esteban wearing face-paint -- that slayed me), or Francisco's being the only one not voting to exile Esteban (although after that, did he or anybody else ever really talk about Esteban and what happened? The overall impression I'm left with is that unless the episode actually had Esteban crossing paths with them [like "Dreamcatcher"], none of the other protagonists ever act like what happened affected them any). Initially I intended to have Esteban interacting with Luisa here instead, but I couldn't think of something they could bond over. Uh, now I just headcanon that they love one another, but just really don't have much in common, especially since Esteban's no longer a cute little kid (TBH, I don't think either of the grandparents were really fleshed out as characters, so I feel comfortable adding my own stuff to them). Luisa and Elena, on the other hand, do seem to have fairly similar personalities, so yeah, I see those two gravitating towards each other more.

 - I wanted to name the song that Esteban and Francisco play together to add more detail, but 1) I am not a musician, and 2) I don't speak Spanish (barely. Certainly not enough to hold a conversation).

Also, real-talk, but I think villains who hate music simply because "Rrragh I'm the bad guy!" are kinda goofy. I may try to further flesh out Shuriki's reasons for hating it in future installments.

- I wonder if anyone ever considers just how rough Francisco has had it. Both his daughters are dead. It seems like the family would have more relatives out there though (something I lightly referenced in this chapter). What about people from Raoul's side? Esteban's father? Don't Francisco and Luisa have any siblings, nephews, nieces, etc? I refuse to believe that they're all single births (hmm... that'd be mighty convenient and pat). Personally, I'm really "ehh" at Christobel's existence (but the episode he shows up in is hot garbage to me anyways). If I ever do decide that I need him, maybe I'll retcon him into someone from Esteban's dad's side of the family or something.

Don't think people really think about the friends Fransisco and Luisa more then likely lost to old age and such during their imprisonment (hey, might as well call it an imprisonment) either.

- This chapter acknowledges something I've never seen an EoA fic discuss (I think the show very lightly touched on it with the "Gabe not liking sports" thing that one time, but didn't go all the way there) -- machismo. Not to hate on people for not exploring it -- could be that some people don't feel comfortable tackling a subject they may not be familiar with or something. Again, I feel it's something that would add more layers to Esteban. I think in this setting, where I approach Esteban as a gay man, he'd wrestle with and be insecure about whether or not he was a "real man". Francisco is the idealized man in their culture -- strong, he was this badass soldier, he has a wife and kids and was a good dad. Esteban doesn't have any of those things to his name. 

Even Francisco himself is unknowingly a victim of this mentality -- I headcanon him as someone who doesn't really like to appear vulnerable because he thinks he has to always look strong for everybody else. But it was a moment where he saw his grandson was really hurting, so he was willing to lower his defenses because of his love for Esteban.

Aww. I really like their relationship.

 - I decided Esteban has the rank of duke here (inherited from his father), the highest rank among Spanish nobility, right under your princes, kings, etc. He needed a place to be duke of, since you just can't have a title and not have it be connected to a locale. Vila Rica was the name of an old town in Mexico that's no longer in existence.

In Spanish, all lords are referred to as "Don", so as part of the royal family, Francisco would also correctly be called "Don Francisco" (BTW, I need to choose a rank for Francisco, since the show never says what he is). If you'd like more info about Spanish nobility, then try starting here. "But OLU, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source." Then go to the bottom of the page. There'll be links to other sites and resources, and they're usually pretty trustworthy.

- I don't think the show ever answered the question of whether or not Esteban is actually of the Royal House/Blood. We know his mother is Queen Lucia's sister, but is his father also a part of the royal line? I just went ahead and said yes (even though that means there probably was some intermarrying among the family in the past in order for that to be the case, like cousins. No, I don't want to focus on that in the fics or elsewhere, it's gross. It was a different world back then, but it's still gross to think about, lol). That gives Esteban a stronger claim to the throne and fuel Raoul's paranoia.

ETA: Okay, so apparently he's only related to Elena through his mother (her aunt). Well, this is an AU, so this won't be the last time I muck with canon. XD

- So the, uh, thing with Esteban and Shuriki actually hails from a short story written by JB Blackwood. However, said story is sadly no longer online. I think it's an idea that makes a ton of sense though. You have this good-looking guy and a psychopathic, power-hungry sorceress -- I can totally see her making gross comments at him and even forcing herself on him. No, neither certainly has any feelings for the other within my works. If someone else wants to ship them in their fics then they can, but I do not. Sorry. Also I could be wrong, but I don't see male rape perpetrated by women getting touched on very much in fiction. Certainly not fanfiction. 

I didn't want to outright say "she raped him", because I like being more subtle then that, but I do worry about being so subtle that readers won't catch it. I've had people miss stuff in my fics before that I thought I'd made pretty clear.

- We don't see Esteban in the scene in "The Secret Of Avalor" where Luisa gives Elena her amulet, but I imagine he most likely was present. As I worked on that part where he's recalling that moment however I had the same question Esteban did in the fic -- why is Elena the only one to ever get magical doodads in the show? Why not him and Isa too (that might make for an interesting AU in another Esteban fic idea I have)? Considering all the malvagos and other crazy magical stuff in Everealm, everybody should be packing some form of proverbial heat. Or something.

- I love writing dream and nightmare sequences. They're the best because you can get so surreal with them. XD

- I admit, I probably should've used the term malvago in the story at some point. I didn't. I'll try to keep it in mind for later fics.

- Suicide is considered a mortal sin in Catholicism. That plus general fear is why Esteban never acted on his old thoughts about jumping off the parapet.

- When I saw that EoA made Esteban thirsty for the throne, my reaction was "Why are they trotting out this old canard again?" I swear, if you're royalty in the Disney-verse, um, go ahead and kill your relatives and castle/palace staff, because A) they will either want to take over, or B) help somebody else take over. My original intention was to drop this element of Esteban's character, as I've always felt canon handled it very badly and awkwardly. However, someone very cleverly talked me out of doing so by spinning it as "ambitious male relative in line for succession, but the king changed the laws so his daughters could inherit the throne instead." I likes me a little juicy royal drama. Plus, now Esteban has real reasons for feeling the way he does instead of... whatever it was EoA was trying to do. Like, he wanted the throne there just 'cuz, y'know "I'm shady and way cooler then Elena, and the audience needs somebody to hate!" Then he stopped wanting the throne (after that Fountain of Youth episode, I believe it was?), but then in the third season randomly decided towards the end, "No. Let's go get that throne after all, because my dream was always to be king!" 

I just. Wut. I wonder would things have been better if Disney hadn't announced they were canceling the series after the third season? Again, did not want to make Raoul into an outright awful man. Between his sister-in-law's kid and his own, he picked his own.

The same person who suggested going that route with Esteban's behind-the-scenes scheming also supplied the idea for Esteban setting aside his own dreams in order to please his family (something which he mentioned once in the show, but which was never further explored -- who's shocked by that, lol?). And I wanted to play around more with Esteban's insecurity over constantly playing second fiddle to everybody else -- Elena, Victor, etc. Again, better motivations for his turning heel like he did, and therefore, makes for a way more compelling story (canon messed up there again). 

- I also envision Victor as pushing Esteban towards the dark side. Let me break it down for the Canon Cops and anti-Esteban folk -- no, that does not mean Esteban is absolved of everything he did. In "The King Of Carnival", the grandparents Flores made it pretty clear (to me) that they didn't like Victor, I doubt they were shy about their feelings before (and with his apparently being known as a frickin' thief around the palace, I'm sure the rest of the family didn't like him either, or had misgivings about him), it pissed Victor off, and he was like "I'll show them." And it was easy for him to light the powder keg that was Esteban, as he was already having issues with his relatives. I don't know, sounds like a Victor move to me.

Again, that is all just my headcanon. If people don't like it, then they're certainly more then welcome to go read something else. Just sayin' -- EoA isn't the first fandom I've been in where people are hella eager to tell you that you're wrong because X, Y, Z/or fancy themselves the morality police.

Fun facts:

- I saw a one-shot which had Francisco teaching Esteban guitar (I'm sorry, I don't know the name of the story). Made sense to me for that to be case!

- I headcanon that iris purple and silver are Shuriki's official colors, given that the palace was prominently decorated with those two colors in "The Secret Of Avalor".

- Until recently, I had no idea that the world Sofia The First and EoA occur on is called Everealm.

"To Catch Up With The Sun" Chapter One notes

I'm finding that many of my stories stem from things I don't like in canon/fanon, as well as a desire to see the kinds of storytelling elements I prefer. There aren't many good stories around in the EoA fandom which actually focus on Esteban (I've seen a scant few I like or which seem promising, but that number is more then likely less then ten in total), and often he gets shipped with a canon character I don't like in a bunch of them. 

I remember initially playing around with the idea of doing a story that stuck closer to canon. But after realizing that EoA's writing was just going to continue to disappoint (aside from a handful of decent episodes sprinkled here and there), I decided the AU route would ultimately work better for me. I think taking the characters in a more adult direction makes them more fascinating to follow. Looking through my blog, I see that I've had this idea since December 2018 (a three chapter story I only finished this year... =D). It originally stemmed from a few people at the show's Reddit community saying that it would be interesting to see what it was like for the Castillo-Flores to deal with everything that happened after being reunited. 

Uh, a lot has changed since then. Still liked the idea enough to develop it however, in part because I realized I needed a way to show how my universe was different from the show's and set things up. With TCUWTS done, I can now move onto other stories set within this AU (which I still need to name. I've been jokingly calling it Esteban Of Avalor).

My take on the EoA world is intended to have more historical elements and less... goofy stuff, but still maintain that Disney flair. It's sort of a kinder, gentler version of our world (for example, there was no slave trade carried on by any of the major world powers, probably not a Crusade as we would know it, etc), but only up to an extent. Like, it's still not a place where you can really run around openly as a gay person (well, unless you're rich like Esteban, and even then most people don't actually know about his sexual orientation XD). It's also not set in any specific time period that we'd recognize from our own world history. 

I saw people at the subreddit saying EoA is set in the 1800s (I think), but I don't believe that anymore. For one, there are still knights in plate armor running around in Enchancia. Knights had gone the way of plague doctors well before the 1700s. Much of the fashion in both series also looks newer then the Middle Ages, but too old for the 1800s. Of course, it could also be that they took a lot of stylistic liberties with clothing too. At this point I feel pretty comfortable in saying Disney just pulls whatever from the past and throws it into Sofia The First and EoA. That's not me hating on them for that; I mean, that's one way not to tether your fantasy series to a certain time period. It's it's own thing.

Also, let me say here and now that just because I criticize the show/or most of its characters does not mean I personally hate if you if you do happen to like them. I fully support your right to enjoy them. I only take issue with fans if they feel the need to belittle me/other people for not agreeing with them, or are otherwise behaving inappropriately.

- The story title is taken from the lyrics of the Pink Floyd song (which is one of my favorite of theirs) "Time". Originally I had been calling my fic When We Dead Awaken. One day I happened to be listening to "Time" though and thought some of the lyrics could apply to Esteban's situation. Like TCUWTS, the song also deals with the theme of the passage of time. Here's a character who's fixated on his lost youth and fears old age. In the story proper a few times I allude to the idea that at one time Esteban was this kid who thought he has all the time in the world... but before he knows it, that's not the case anymore. He's nearly sixty. 

Each chapter title are lyrics taken from "Time". Here's the part that inspired both the title and the first chapter:

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

And here's the song itself if anyone's interested: 

 

- You know that river that runs by the palace and which Shuriki ended up falling into? I have no clue if it's ever been given a name in the show or not. I didn't see anything about it, so I just went and named it myself. Mitotiqui is a Nahuatl word meaning "dancer".

- I have no clue where Castillo-Flores as a surname for Elena and her family originated from. I just saw it someplace and was happy I didn't have to come up with my own surname for them. It mean "castle flower", which is cool.

- "Don" is Spanish for Lord. Ergo, when people are calling Esteban "Don Esteban", they are calling him "Lord Esteban", which is appropriate for a man of his station. Also, in the show he's simply just the Chancellor, but I refer to him as "Lord Chancellor" here for extra fanciness, lol. It's something I borrowed from the Brits.

- Another thing I really wanted to do was add more palace staff and people who the Castillo-Flores knew/or know as a way to flesh out the world. Unless it was some kind of special occasion, I remember the palace almost always looking huge and empty. A real palace would have servants, courtiers, guards, etc all over the place. Same for the city itself (this kinda seems to be a reoccurring issue with modern cartoons, I've noticed). I'll make a character list so readers can keep up with who's who.

- For the life of me I couldn't justify any reason as to why Esteban would have Higgins/or Armando working for him in my setting. Like, my Esteban's intelligence is supposed to be pretty consistent (unlike the series) and he's a pretty pragmatic dude, so he'd want to have a competent manservant, y'know? If you haven't seen the show, then Higgins and Armando both are just your standard goofy bumbling sidekicks, nothing more. Not only that, but I don't even know what Armando was doing in canon at this point, since he has like a hundred jobs there. Like, he's a personal servant, a puppeteer, and a cook who gets on some kind of committee in the second season?... And to top it all off, he's not that strong a character to carry whole episodes by himself, so I don't care about him and only became more and more actively annoyed that canon kept shoving this boring unfunny doofus into my face and telling me to care. Time wasted on Armando-centric episodes could've been spent on more worthwhile characters, or moving the plot forward.

I'd ask whatever happened to Higgins, but that'd actually require me to care about him. He was the same character as Armando, but white I guess. Thankfully, the freedom of fanfic allows me to replace them both with someone else entirely (Sancho). I will enjoy making Armando a very minor bit player on the periphery of things.

- That bit with Esteban thinking about executioners not being successful in decapitating prisoners the first time around? That is actually something real that I've heard before... probably in something discussing Henry VII and his wives, if I recall correctly.

 Also, high treason refers to acts of treason committed against a sovereign.

- From what I understand, rice pudding (arroz con leche) is a popular comfort food in Mexican culture. Have a recipe.

- Poor jaquins. They were not used well. I remembered in one episode (it might've been the special where Elena goes to Vallestra) it was stated that they were the guardians of Avalor -- okay, so why did all we see them do was pester Shuriki in "Elena/Sofia And The Secret Of Avalor" then? If you knew Esteban was the last member of the royal family around, then why not just grab him, fly him somewhere safe, then go back and attack Shuriki? I'm sure Esteban would've been more then happy to provide info to them in order to aid in a successful revolt. But no. They were just cute animal sidekicks who were cheerleaders and transportation for Elena. There's writing a show for little kids, and there's making characters stupid because you can't write. If they'd tried putting up a fight against Shuriki then that would've been something at least. They never really did anything to make me believe they were these stalwart guardians, much less be taken seriously as such. And I was actually intrigued by Cruz and his sister, but they were wasted too (you wasted A.C. Slater, writers!)! 

Uh, I have different plans for the jaquins here. Also, because I'm not limited by a Y-7 rating, expect to see them, as the kids say, "tear shit up."

- I wanted to add more depth to the feud between Victor and the Castillo-Flores clan. I do not see the guy as having any interest in religion, and that would not make him kindly disposed to a bunch of staunch Catholics (Francisco the traditionalist, anybody?). Does anyone remember it being stated that Victor's father was the royal treasurer? Was that ever brought up again?

- I don't think a person confronting a sorceress by themselves without some kind of backup or protection is smart, no (IMHO, Esteban would think the same). Yes, I still feel that way even if the other protagonists keep on telling us how awesome and brave said person is for doing so. I'm guessing Elena just charged in like she was just gonna straight-up body Shuriki with no strategy or plan because that's precisely what she did when Shuriki returned. She's a really frustrating protagonist to watch. :-/

- So initially my fics were going to be neutral towards the issue of the characters' religion. If EoA's Reddit community is anything to go by, I feel like several of the fans would react negatively to the religious elements. But a person I knew made the argument that Christian analogues do crop up in fantasy settings, such as Lord Of The Rings, The Chronicles Of Narnia, and Dawnflight. And EoA itself did seem to be implying that the characters are Roman Catholic, considering the fact that they observe Carnival ("King Of The Carnival"). And they are Latinos, so... more then likely, Catholics. Come on, if Hanukkah is a thing in EoA, then why not Catholicism?

I hope people are not going to take any of this and accuse me of being okay with the bad things the Church has done, even though there is absolutely nothing in TCUWTS to even suggest that. Nor do I think that an EoA fic is really the right kind of vehicle to criticize the Church with. One could probably better do that if you were say, writing for the series Evil (a more grounded series that does deal with real world social commentary). But it is the Internet, so I've resigned myself to someone saying something eventually.

I thought it'd be a nice change of pace from what we tend to see in fiction (the Church practically declaring war on anyone who uses magic/magical creatures) to have the Church here view good magic as a gift from God instead. It's just something you don't see too often. The more I thought about it, the more I think introducing religion wouldn't just add more depth to the cast, but give insight into how they engage with the world around them, other people, and even see themselves. I'm not Catholic, but I do find the architecture of their churches beautiful and the services have a certain... gravitas to them. And there's another reason why I wanted to touch on this matter...

- The chapel scene in my fic was inspired by this: link It's a really memorable moment in the movie, and you have no idea how much I just love the twisted juxtaposition of a character pretending to be pious and sitting in church while dark things are going on outside (though in Esteban's case, I make it clear that unlike Michael, he didn't know that anyone was going to get axed. He is a lot of things. Psychotic isn't one of them. Even EoA for all its flaws usually makes that clear). No one gets baptized in my scene, so I devised the idea of Esteban and Victor going to Mass early as a cover story instead. I was told about the Confiteor, a prayer in which evil is rejected and which occurs early on as a ritual cleansing before the Sacrament, and wanted to specifically feature it in place of Godfather's baptismal prayer. I don't know how canon played it or if they even did, but I knew I did not want to have a scene with Esteban and Victor sitting around sneering and cackling evilly because OMG SO EVUL. That's very cartoony and lame.

I'm actually not sure if Victor knew Shuriki was going to kill the king and queen or not.

- I figured Esteban would have pet names for his grandparents, so I did some Googling and landed on Lita and Papito respectively for them. He also calls Francisco "old man" (in his head), something which started out as an insult but morphed into a term of affection with time.