It's story time with Uncie Exile, kids!
INSPIRATION
Regarding his personality, my inspiration in writing him just comes from how I perceive him to be in the show. He strikes me as being a genuinely enthusiastic, generally happy character who typically openly expresses his thoughts and feelings there. The one time he wasn't, when he thought he had turned into a werewolf ("A Hair Of The Dog That Bit You"), I interpret his behavior there to stress and fear of hurting his teammates. He cares about others. I am just not a fan of this icy, closed-off Exile I tend to see in fan works. He's truly invested in the well-being of others and wears his heart on his sleeve: off my head, in "A Day In The Life", he comforted Colleen when she was upset about Hunter's potentially having a special someone (who wasn't her), he was very enthusiastic about Hunter's plan to free all of the imprisoned dogs in "Hunter's Heroes", in the same episode he apologizes to Blitz when the latter slips and falls on an ice sheet Exile had created to waylay some cano-mutants (and if you're someone who thinks Exile wasn't being sincere in that moment, then why he'd even apologize to Blitz in the first place then??? If he really didn't care, then he either wouldn't have said anything at all or just made a smartmouth comment when he did), he loves giving out hugs. We got thirteen episodes of Exile behaving this way, so I tend to feel like this is what his personality is typically like.
So why do so many fans either make Exile a jerk/or this ultra-serious stoic robot in fan works?
We don't know anything about Exile's past beyond what little we get in the pilot. He isn't a fleshed out character. We don't know what his personal hobbies, interests, dreams, and fears are. Many fandoms would salivate at this, getting to come up with their own takes on a major character's backstory and flesh them out further. Look at all the diverse ideas people spin for character histories in stuff like The Lion King, NCIS, the Transformers franchise, Power Rangers, or My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Countless fandoms. But the Road Rovers fandom... hardly anybody seems even remotely interested in offering up anything for Exile (based on what I've seen of a number of other people on Fanfiction.net and deviantART, I would say that I don't think any of them really want to either). It's the same for the other characters minus Hunter, whose backstory we did (kinda) get. Honestly, I feel like that's partly a side effect of how the show was written. The fandom treats the rest of the Rovers the same way the show does -- all of them play second fiddle to Hunter. They're just not as important as Hunter is (my original stance on Hunter has only hardened over the years), so who cares about explaining who they are and where they come from? The fact that original characters likewise heavily dominate fan works doesn't help matters any. It's sad.
The only two fans who I've personally ever seen demonstrate an actual interest in Exile (that was unrelated to shipping him with their fan characters) were Usami and That One Evil Writer. I borrow some of their ideas for my own story-verse.
As far as relatives for Exile goes, I use the original family members created by Usami for her story Power Of The Pack. It's a pretty solid story about Exile discovering that his family members have been turned into cano-mutants by General Parvo. I thought these new characters were cool, and decided to incorporate them into STARS. Oddly enough, out of all the canon characters, a lot of fans love giving Exile siblings who are either evil or get brainwashed into becoming evil the most. I don't know why that is. But Shurik, Illya, and Star (Zevezda in STARS; "zevezda" simply means star in Russian) are some of the better examples of this trope.
FUTURE PLANS
So what will Exile be getting up to in the STARS-verse? Well, right now my major guiding point would be giving his character more dimensions instead of just being a joke machine like in the show. I can say for certain that I'll have him revisiting his past, including having him meet up with his former owner to let him know what's happened to him and see how he (the sled team owner) is doing, an idea Evil Writer mentioned to me. Looking at fanfics in RR fandom, you wouldn't even know the Rovers have owners in the first place (their current masters and, in Exile's case, the sledder who used to have him back in Siberia). They're treated like they barely exist, and most of the time you never even hear anything about their existence. The Rovers just seem so indifferent towards them. One would think that when Hunter is going to marry Colleen he'd go "Oh wow, you know, I'd like to tell my master the truth about me being a Rover so I could invite him to the ceremony!" Or go and talk to him about marriage or whatever (although I know Bill Clinton is a controversial figure, so maybe that's not one of the better examples I could've used. But the only reason I picked him as my example in the first place is because guess the Rover who's most often shown getting serious in a relationship/or getting married? I'll wait). Pretty weird, considering how the Rovers acted so happy about getting homes in "Let's Hit The Road". Again, I think it's just more evidence to show that most fans are only vaguely interested in the show's concept, a few characters, and nothing else.
Another fan named Bart Walls actually devised an archenemy for Exile named Boris "Hacker" Sanhusky. I really like the idea of Exile getting to have his own personal foe, so Hacker is a character I've chosen to incorporate into my own 'verse. He'll make his appearance sometime in the near future in a story I'm calling The Island Of Misfit Rovers. Of course, we'll learn more about him then.
I also plan to focus on exploring his relationships with other characters, both canons and original. Yes he will be getting his own love interest, which will be an original character. And... he'll also be getting a power up!
HEADCANONS
- Early on he is the closest thing Colleen has to a 'girlfriend'.
- His favorite thing to eat are beef pirozhkis.
- Out of all the Alphas, Exile is the one who keeps on top of the latest technologies.
- I don't really understand the point of the cartoon's giving him night vision, since dogs can naturally see in the dark and all. Either the writers didn't know that, or did and his night vision was just supposed to be better then most dogs (the show never stated how good it was). I just say his night vision's on par with a feline's.
- His heat vision relies on the heat within his own
body, so if his body temperature drops enough, then he really can't use
that particular power.
- Usami came up with a couple of interesting theories regarding Exile, including the ones that I'm using about his heat vision and his getting glasses. She pointed out how Exile seemed to have trouble locating a certain image in one of those "find this object" picture books and had to ask Shag for help, who found it right away, plus, how he needed glasses to read a manual. She was fully aware that all those instances were just gags, but suggested the idea of Exile having trouble with his eyesight could be turned into a serious issue. I think Exile would look nice in glasses, and his having to get some is a cool idea.
- Exile and Blitz are best friends in the vein of Shawn and Gus (Psyche).
If you're someone who wants to approach Exile and Blitz's relationship in a testier manner however, then may I suggest you watch the series One Piece* and take notes from it? Two of the major heroes in it, Zoro and Sanji, often argue, fight, and poke fun at one another. At the same time however, the story demonstrates that when push comes to shove, both has the other's back. They've agreed with each other in certain situations. Zoro and Sanji also think pretty highly of each other's skills and abilities -- although they probably wouldn't outright admit it to the other's face lol. They're a terrific example of frenemies done right.
ETA: Here's the link to the video showing Zoro and Sanji together; YouTube won't let me post it in video format here.
By comparison, the way that not only the Rovers but lots of heroes from other western media who work together in a group are written, having that one person that barely anybody else on the team likes and picks on, well, I don't think the good guys would actually function as a unit nearly as well as they do in canon. But I'll touch more on this issue when I get to Blitz's analysis. And I specified western media here because I noticed anime like the aforementioned
One Piece tends to be much better about handling this kind of thing.
Now, when you're animating for a weekly show, the character designs need to be simple enough in order to be easier to animate and therefore meet deadlines. That's not a bad thing, it's just a thing in the industry. That's what they did with Road Rovers. In my setting, which I freely admit at this point is an AU from the Kids' WB show (that's right Canon Cops, my fics aren't canon because they're NOT supposed to be canon!), I've tweaked Exile's design to be more like a real husky's as well as more detailed, and so make him a little more interesting to look at. I'll try to get a pic of him up soon. His design in the cartoon isn't bad, just simplistic.
PERSONAL
Discussing Exile has been a different animal (ho ho ho 😏) when compared to my talking about Esteban before. Road Rovers, like many cartoons back in the day, is a lot more episodic in nature when compared to Elena of Avalor, which has plot elements that are carried on to later episodes. The show's also interesting in that no one character held the spotlight (though the writer seemed to have a strong bias towards a certain one...), and we didn't get much of anything in regards to consistent character development. This means that Exile, as well as the rest of the Rovers, are pretty flat when compared to some of the other characters I'll be talking about in future installments here. Basically, I have had to build his character from the ground up, but that's okay, because the show gave me some good stuff to go off of for him.
ETA: I wonder... why did the people working on the show decided to pick the name Exile for him, and not a more standard Russian/or Russian-esque dog name, like Boris? That'd be a far more interesting question for Tom Ruegger (the creative mind behind Road Rovers), instead of pestering him about when the show's coming back.
I can answer that last one. It's not ever coming back. Never. It's been gone for two decades. If it ever does return, then it'd probably be as a reboot, and even then I cannot see that happening.
*"One Piece is a really mid anime, OLU!" Okay, but you're missing the forest for the trees. Please listen to the point that I was trying to make about how Sanji and Zoro are written.
