#breadpans

Shark Teens/Wymsea: Be true to who you are. Especially true in Shark Teens, all of the stories that take place in Wymsea  have a connecting thread of characters succeeding in their goals when they cast aside the expectations of others and act in a way that’s true to their own self. Whether it’s as small Keahi making strong bonds of friendship with people once he decides to own his interest in marine biology, or as big as Ash ceasing to act based on the gods’ belief that she is evil and what she must do to be good, no one gets anywhere as long as they let someone else dictate who they are.

Rollercoaster/Battlescars: Love is never enough alone. Each of the two planned books in the Battlescars verse (which is technically part of the Wymsea verse, but only on a technicality) have themes about the price of love, and whether it’s worth it: the full titles, “This Love Will Leave Us Battlescars” and “This Love is a High-Speed Rollercoaster” both reflect the idea that love is a beautiful, terrible, dangerous thing, but if you’re willing to put in the work, it will create a foundation that can’t be cracked by anything- but alone, it isn’t enough to hold up under a single drop of conflict.

Volumes of Rhell/The Andias Chronicle: Own your actions, even your mistakes. There’s a strong theme of personal responsibility in the stories of Rhell, particularly in Andias and especially for Adelaide. Characters in Rhell make bad choices and then they must make those mistakes right. Sometimes those mistakes can’t be made right; sometimes those mistakes have consequences that the person must learn to live with and move on. At the end of the day, there’s no option to push the problem onto someone else; it’s your choice, your mistake, your problem, and your responsibility. (Unless you’re Toby, the god of not doing your fucking job.)

Kingdom of Crescendo: What sort of man do you want to be? Crescendo is a very male centric story, that explores the different sides to masculinity and how it is worn, and the different ways there are of expressing that masculinity. The main character, Forte, is at the center of this, being bombarded by ideas about manhood from all sides and trying to decide which ones to hold onto and which ones to reject. While masculinity in Crescendo isn’t as toxic as masculinity in our world, it still holds dangers (as any concept does) and is a world that my male characters must navigate in finding their way.

Hope and the Dark Destroyer: How many burdens can we reasonably be expected to bear? The argument of using your own power to help others vs using your power to stop others hurting you is the main conflict between Hope and Dark for the first few seasons, and when we start adding more characters we also begin to add other angles to the philosophical question of what responsibility comes with the power they’ve been given. Some believe that the power to help comes with the responsibility to help, while others feel they have responsibilities that using their power would hinder. Moreso than any of my other themes, this one is very divisive (of the cast certainly, but probably also the hypothetical fanbase) and it’s repeatedly shown that there’s no easy or straightforward answer available.

Monsters, Etc: Community and family are the ones that you make. This one is really straightforward. Monsters exist on the outskirts of society, and in the modern world have had to build their own community outside of the mundane community, in order to hold onto their stability and existence. Almost none of the monsters in the building are related by blood, but all of them are a family and would ride or die for one another- and this is true of monsters all over. A monster on their own is lost, but a monster with a family can make it through. (There are also strong themes of “what makes a monster” and “people can have all reasons to hate you, some of them are because you’re an asshole” but those aren’t as pervasive as the first one.)

R.O.H.G.E.: Girls supporting girls and having each other’s backs. The girls in this story all start out as various “not like other girl” stereotypes and eventually grow out of this. Girls have to look out for each other, they have to support each other. It’s important, and with so many stories where girls are catty and vicious and backstabbing, it’s important to have stories where they aren’t. Buuut teenagers are a thing and R.O.H.G.E. is a story that watches five (six, we learn later) girls find out that they’re stronger when they look out for one another than they ever were when they were trying to separate themselves from each other.

Deathworld J3: Some people want danger and some people wants safety, and you don’t get to make that choice for someone. The whole thing in J3 was the dichotomy between the safety of the utopias, and the peril of the outlands. But unlike other stories where there might be a power imbalance on who was allowed the limited resources of the utopias, J3 doesn’t have that. People who live in the outlands do so by choice, because they decided that fighting against a landscape that wants to kill you is their ideal lifestyle. And sometimes we might think those people maybe, don’t really belong in the wild outlands fighting for their lives. But nobody else gets to make that decision for them, and sometimes the best that can be done is offer them the tools to survive and wish them the best.

Breadpans/Snap and Tech: The most important part of an adventure is who you’re having it with. These two don’t take place in the same continuity, but there’s a lot of overlap in the overall tone and story structure for both of them, and I’d even go so far as to say that Breadpans is the spiritual successor of Snap and Tech. In any case, the story for both of them is a pair of best friends with vastly different personalities seeking out adventure and enjoying those adventures on the grounds that they’re with each other. Each of them gets to, at some point, learn that the adventures they have together are way better for the sake of them being together than any adventure they went on alone.

I love them.......

“Allow me to introduce my wife.” -reaches into a brawl of flying limbs and plucks Pooch out- “Presenting, Lady Siria Fillin-Leandre.” 

“Sup.”

Their adventuring company is based in a plane where the landscape is sentient, which is where Toby comes in.