#redtiger

i am nothing if not a people pleaser. also this is never happening again

actual real text messages i sent my friend during this process under the cut

Sorry for the long ask, just curious about how this au works.

Hello hi! I’m doing alright thanks for the ask :D! The long ask is completely fine! Encouraged even! Just means my answer will be very long. Oops.

I think VILE would choose Sheena because they know Gray will go easy on Carmen, they recognise he’s going to try to talk things out with her. Which, as we see in the show, won’t work! So they go with Sheena instead!

Don’t get me wrong- Sheena is NOT a ‘better’ choice, Sending Sheena solves the ‘going easy’ problem, but opens up a whole inverse problem with the whole ‘they’re rivals who hate each other’ thing. It's going to be hard to convince Carmen to come back whilst insulting her. At the end of the day both Gray and Sheena would fail that encounter with Carmen. VILE doesn’t win in either universe </3

I think Sheena is aware of the importance of the dolls, her first interaction with Black Sheep was threatening those dolls! She just doesn’t know why those dolls are so important, which might be a good segue into the backstory! Rather than “How did you wind up in crime school?” She could ask something like “Why do you care so much about those stupid dolls anyway?” Which gives way to the whole backstory infodump.  I think Sheena is curious about Carmen (not ‘caring’ but ‘curious’ if that makes sense? Like how you can hate someone or something so much, but still want to learn about it. + Carmen is just generally interesting, she’s changed a lot since Sheena last saw her) but she would never admit that EVER.

So yeah, I think Sheena likely baits Carmen the same way Gray does, plays out the same until we get to the train- instead of Gray it’s Sheena there!

How does the whole train thing happen… I’m not totally sure. I have some ideas though!

The idea I have so far is that Carmen was fully expecting Gray to show up. 4th wall breaking the AU kinda “Hey wait a minute. Tigress. You're not supposed to be in this scene.” Carmen thinks using the dolls as bait is a plan that only someone who knows her well like Gray would come up with, so when she finds out it’s Sheena she’s thrown off guard?  Carmen’s curious as to how Sheena would know to do that, how much was Sheena picking up about her while they were rivals? She’s curious about Sheena as well, though she would also never admit that EVER! EVERRRR!!!

Sheena comes into the situation WAY more confrontational than Gray in canon, launching into a fight straight away and catching Carmen by surprise because Carmen was expecting Gray to show up! She's off her game. She wasn’t expecting to be fighting a crazy cat lady this evening.

Them fighting also allows a way for Player to get cut off from Carmen! Gray isn’t there to do his electricity bullshit but we still need Player to get cut off so Carmen can be alone. Maybe her earrings get crushed in the fight? And Sheena can obviously tell she’s calling for help if Carmen reaches for a phone, so she’s cut off from Player as long as Sheena is here.

Sheena wins the first fight w/ the element of surprise + the fact the two haven’t fought in ages + She mad as hell. But she’s not supposed to kill Carmen and there is that underlying curiosity she won’t admit, which leads into the whole backstory thing. She plays it off with the fact she needs to take the train to Paris anyway so this is aaaaall part of her plan, she wants to see Carmen plead her case since she's at her mercy now. Carmen is telling her backstory to stall Sheena (assuming she will find a way to escape by the time they reach Paris) and maaaaaaybe just the slightest hope that she can convince her to change her opinion and let Carmen go.

You know when a villain has basically won but they spend their time delivering a speech which gives the hero just enough time to escape? It's like that except the hero is the one giving the speech I suppose!

Carmen is way less enthusiastic about sharing her backstory here. She didn't want to talk to Sheena, she assumed she'd be talking to Gray. Sheena isn’t very receptive to the backstory, she’s constantly interrupting and heckling, despite the fact she's making Carmen tell her all this. She doesn’t share the same guilt about VILE that Gray does so she doesn’t care about the whole “stealing lives is bad” thing- 

In fact that actually pisses her off:

Sheena accepts the whole “Okay… she’s Carmen now, she’s no longer Black Sheep that era is over.” thing much quicker than Gray does. Sheena’s misunderstanding is why Carmen’s morals matter at all to her in the first place, her thought process is basically “Killing shouldn't even be a problem at all! You were top of the class and you threw that all away? You have so much skill that I wish I had myself and you’re going to waste it on this?? Why on earth would you do that???”

Sheena doesn't understand the whole morality thing and sees Carmen as wasting her potential, rather than what she’s actually doing; making her own path and far exceeding whatever potential VILE saw in her! All that makes Sheena super mad because she is super jealous of Carmen's abilities! The fact Carmen is willing to just throw it all away (In Sheena's eyes at least) is infuriating to her.

Sheena isn’t trying to convince Carmen to come back by being nice with the whole ”please come back we miss you :(“ approach Gray has, her approach is more “You need to lock in. Quit wasting your time on this and come back. This is pathetic and won’t work.” which promptly devolves into “Other people don’t MATTER why do you care about other people?!”

Once they’re in Paris they get into a fight again (Like Gray and Carmen do in canon) Carmen wins, puts Sheena in her coat and skedaddles. 👍

I love shipping characters, i love multi-shipping, I think polyships are cool and all that jazz. So here are some of my favorite Carmen Sandiego ships (rated from 1 to 10, headcanons sometimes included and in no particular order, these exclude my oc x canon ships lol)

1 Countess Cleo x Dr. Saira Bellum : 10000/10

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, THEY MAKE ME SICK, AHHHHHHHH!!! they are married and have been for quite some

2 Tigress x Paperstar: 10/10

I'm so normal about them I swear.....

3 El Topo x Le Chevre: 9.5/10

Had to deduct half a point because I've never actually read a fanfiction centered around them, like i think they are cute as a ship but I can't read a story focused on them, side ship in a fanfiction or maybe even a short one shot i could read

4 Cookie Booker x Lady Dokuso: 9.5/10

Deducting a half a point because im biased and I ship Cookie with my oc (I also ship Lady Dokuso with one of my other ocs but they are bad for each other 😭). I do love this ship though, I'm writing a short fic for them and everything.

5 Carmen x Julia: 100/10

I love them SO much! They are so adorable together, and they live in a cute little house together a few years after the events of the show okay. (When I say a few, I mean at least 5 to 6 years lol)

6 Carmen x Tigress x Paperstar: 9/10

Okay so... look, I read one fanfiction with this ship because I was really reading for Tigress x Paperstar but I ended up liking the polyship so.... yeah

7 Cookie Booker x Countess Cleo 8/10

I have no good explanation, they are simply my favorites so I shipped them.... case closed.

8 Coach Brunt x The Mechanic: 7/10

Okay so this is a newer one that was brought to my attention so im still kind of iffy about it, especially since I don't like Brunt a whole lotb😭, but like... I like her when she's with other characters, ya know what I mean, like I love all the faculty together as some weird highly dysfunctional family (not as a ship just to be clear, though im not gonna lie they do lowkey sound like a polycule). ANYWAY....ig that's all I have to say about this one lol.

9 Shadowsan x Lady Dokuso: 7.5/10

Okay so.... this would be like an in the past thing because in my mind they are divorced and Lady Dokuso despises him. BUT at some point... they were married 🙂‍↕️....didn't last long but it happened!!! Like i feel like their relationship would be good at the start but it would end SO BADLY for the both of them

10 Carmen x Tigress: 8.5/10

BUT SPECIFICALLY Evil Carmen x Tigress.... because.... idk why just because lol

That's all the ships I can think of at the moment lol, I might do one with my ocs included, and I might even do one on ships I hate but that list could either be longer or shorter idk yet lol. ALSO im on break soon so if you want to ask me questions feel free I will respond to a few :>

Prompted by @suhara1 i added the orange category because i felt it deserved distinction! (And cuz the see the vision/dont see the vision tiers were getting clogged up lol)

Btw seeing the vision and shipping are totally different. Note how i ship zeena but its the most crackship to ever crack. However imo most CS ships are pretty chill, pretty cool, except for the strange incesty ones. Yeah. But this was fun! What else is a girl to do while at the hair salon lol.

Template below if u wanna make ur own⬇️

hey sillies enjoy some sapphic ships among Carmen and some other gals 💛💛💛 expect more to come soon

"I've been watching him for my entire life,

I hate the air he breathes,

His foolish decrees, his words so contrived,

And I hate the way the townspeople gather outside,

They hang on every breath, cling to his chest

Home to his heart full of pride"

(could be like Tigerclaw being envious of Redtail's popularity, and also thinking that he is a bad deputy)

"I love you and if you want I'll call you king,

But why do I lie awake each night thinking:

Instead of you, it should be me?"

(yes maybe i am slipping in some toxic RedTiger 😭 again with the jealousy though)

"My whole life, you were a teacher and friend to me,

Please know my actions are not motivated only by envy,

I too have a destiny, this death will be art,

The people will speak of this day from near and afar,

This event will be history, and I'll be great too,

I don't want what you have, I wanna be YOU"

(HELLOO??? look idk about you but for ME, THIS FITS THEM PERFECTLY. LIKE THE WHOLE SONG. and maybe change the line "or my mother wished she'd had a son" into "or my mother wished she'd had no son")

The Redtiger flashback scene from Chapter 2 of Autopilot by @which-star | Hot stuff.