#oarfishposting

If I had to think of which AU had the most scrapped scenes, that award goes to the Drowned!Vos AU. The poor aftermath of that story was reworked so many times (mostly because I was indecisive just how antagonistic Romeo would be to the man he cursed to be a soggy zombie forever.) In the first draft, Romeo was so mad that Drowned failed to kill Jack that he completely abandoned him, but that since changed to the Admin being an ongoing antagonist who teleports over when Drowned is alone to belittle him. (Slight gore warning for this next bit.) In one of the more devious scrapped scenes, Romeo enchants his boots with Frost Walker and partially freezes Drowned solid before stomping his leg and breaking it off.

Oarfishposting, while also going through three name changes throughout its time (cod help me), also did a complete 180 in plot. It was almost a basic mad scientist plot where Romeo captured and experimented on any “losers” that couldn’t win his challenges. The adventure trio of course lost the temple, but since Sammy was too far gone and Jack got the hell out of there, Vos was all that was left. Oarfish!Vos was very close to resembling a Frankenstein amalgamation. Of course I am much happier with the final story because a world where everyone is half animal and there is a god trying to trap the rarer hybrids in temples is much more unique and fun to play with.

For the last scrapped plot point I’ll mention, there was a fun idea I was playing around with in the Fantasy Trio AU where instead of Mage!Vos getting turned to solid obsidian, he is instead trapped in a mirror dimension. The mechanics of the challenge were as follows: adventurers enter a large, circular room in the castle and are presented with a myriad of doors along the walls. The floor is a giant mirror which reflects everything above it… albeit slightly different. Anyone one who enters the room has a moving statue reflecting their actions; So long as the statues are not shattered, they can swap places with their statues to enter the mirror dimension. (Their statues would then exist in the real world until they swap back.) Doors in the main room have no knobs so Mage opts to swap places with his statue to start opening the doors in the mirror dimension which do have knobs. Most doors lead to nothing, but some spawn enemies. TLDR: They eventually find the boss of the room, a large drake with a key around its neck, but it headbutts Mage and shatters his statue, rendering him unable to swap places back to the real world after the drake is defeated.

Scrapped AUs:

One AU I scrapped entirely (because Jack doesn’t die from the mess cliff fall) was a Death Trio AU where once Jack re-enters the Sea Temple, he’s haunted by ghastly apparitions of his old friends and how they died until he too eventually meets his demise in the Underneath. Vos’ skin is entirely obsidian and he can cry lava. Sammy bears resemblance to the elder guardians, now sprouting fins, scales, and their one giant eye. Though he doesn’t actually die in game, Jack’s downfall would have been the mesa cliff he falls off if Jesse refuses to give Porkchop their swords. His dead form gets a desert face covering and he leaves a trail of sand he coughs up.

Mercraft: Fish Mode started out as an AU where all characters were merfolk, but I decided it would work better as just a drawing challenge instead of Mermay.

Some crossovers I really didn’t do much with were MC:SM x Flight Rising, Night at the Museum, Wings of Fire, Pokémon, and The Odyssey. Most of these were me wanting to design stuff so I’ll try to sum them up quick. The FR and WoF AUs were excuses for me to draw the cast as dragons. The NatM crossover spawned from a dream where I found a modded version of MC:SM where you play as Jesse, Petra, or Lukas (all night guards) and tended to the museum. Other characters were museum exhibits such as Gabriel being Teddy, Reuben being Rexy, and the Admins as the Egyptians; In all honesty I remember very little from the dream save for Romeo (Kahmunrah) shaking Vos (Jedediah) around in a brita filter. Pokémon AU spawned from me rewatching “Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea” and realizing there’s a character named Jack whose partner is a chatot. The main premise is the basic “everyone has a partner Pokémon” AU where the adventure trio visit the Sea Temple (guardians are huntails, elder guardians are gyarados, colossus are regice… and there’s also a type: null there for uhh plot reasons.) Lastly, I just love The Odyssey so making Jack, Vos, and Sammy > Eurylochus, Odysseus, and Polities was too good to pass up. Plus Polyphemus works perfectly as an elder guardian + Romeo as a very pissed Poseidon.

Main AUs: Vos Possession AU, Drowned!Vos AU, Oarfishposting, ‘Neath!Vos AU, Champion Vos AU, and most recently Admin Accomplice

Secondary/Hiatus AUs: TempleSwap, Fantasy Trio, Abyssal Symptoms, Chipped!Vos, Angel, and Sentry

I’ll try to sum up the AU as best I can. Romeo isn’t fully an Admin, but he does LOVE to play god. Specifically, he enjoys crafting challenges and nabbing any “losers” to toy with and experiment on. Most subjects were turned into mindless brutes that patrol the lab and make sure the other experiments stay in their rooms. Vos is one of the first human subjects and is Romeo’s FAVORITE. As “the loser of the Sea Temple,” Romeo saw it fitting that Vos would be turned half fish as a constant reminder. He also just wanted to see if it were possible to successfully graft gills onto someone to breathe both air and water. (Spoiler: it’s NOT! Vos ends up having difficulty breathing either.) All cells are custom-tailored to their patient’s needs. Vos’ is literally just half iron floor, half swimming pool that can be viewed by the glass walls. It’s very cold and he hates it. :[

As for how Vos specifically handled the experiments… uhh not well. The first few were extremely traumatic; suddenly having altered vision, a tail that makes you off-balance on land, and no longer being able to talk requires getting used to. He was most upset at Romeo for cutting his vocals. (“Fish don’t talk” was the Admin’s reasoning, but in reality he just preferred his subjects not scream the entire surgery.) After he lost his voice, Vos became paranoid and reclusive. The botched gill surgery only furthered that. He spent most days leaning out of the pool; whenever it became too difficult to breathe air, he would submerge himself and whenever water breathing was too harsh, he’d pop back up for air. Some experiments I forgot to mention above: hand/foot webbing, one of his eyes was replaced with a guardian’s, and he has a heart of the sea. Fun patient fact: all patients have a lodestone tracker; Vos’ is a clamp on his tail.

Back to the lore… Jesse, Petra, and Jack eventually try and solve the mystery of people vanishing and that’s what leads them to the lab. (For the record, disappearances are rare but noticeable. Think one person from each town.) Upon entering, the three steal and don lab coats and keycards to try and figure out what’s up. Jesse is actually the one that stumbles across Vos whilst exploring. I’m just imagining him unknowingly unlocking the door and sneaking into a patient’s enclosure to see… nothing remarkable! because a certain fish is hiding at the bottom of the pool. After finding nothing interesting in the room, Jesse turns back around to see a large, scaley figure struggling to open the door he came through. And upon realizing they’ve been spotted, the patient panics and flees back into the water, giving Jesse a look that says “please don’t tell anyone I just tried to escape I won’t do it again.” Meanwhile Jesse is just thinking “ohmycodthat’saperson.” But it’s all good because Jesse lets him out and he’s reunited with Jack who explains to the group that this goliath grouper is his bestie, Vos. Some hijinks ensue when they are spotted by the Warden and Vos flees, but Jack and Petra get to the file room and find out the truth of what happened to everyone and Romeo is defeated by Jesse and the lab falls apart yay!

Bonus: my favorite sequence in the AU is during the escape. Upon being caught by the Warden, instead of detaining everyone, he merely just creates distrust among the group by stating that the Vos they’re harboring is a failed and dangerous clone. He’s very much NOT a clone, but Jack becomes worried for Jesse and Petra’s safety and threatens that if “the clone” won’t go back to where he came from, he’ll turn Vos in to Romeo. Vos cannot talk and thus can’t defend himself and when Jack draws his sword, he panics and flees. Now trying to escape the lab by himself, Vos stumbles into a random cell and is immediately caught in a spiderweb. Xara is revealed to have been meshed with the spiders from the Sunshine Institute maze. Oh and she’s huge. She promptly picks Vos up and is like “oh I wonder how pissed off Romeo would be if his prized subject were to die…” but after looking closer, she feels bad that such heavy experimentations were done on a human and decides that Romeo would be even MORE upset if his prized subject were to escape and be happy so she lets him free. (Don’t worry guys- Jack does realize that OOPS that WAS his buddy when Petra finds Vos’ patient file. And they reunite and it’s all good.)