#rohge

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.

Rachel is your typical Alpha Bitch. She’s the head cheerleader, the most popular girl in school, all the boys want her on their arm, she probably sleeps around, she’s always stylish. She doesn’t see herself as “not like other girls”, she sees other girls as not like her- but obviously she’s everything a girl wants to be and everything a girl should be.

Opal is the goth-punk-emo-rocker girl who has just discovered feminism, and isn’t quite sure what to do with it yet. She wants to throw off the shackles of the patriarchy and embrace all other women in the solidarity of sisterhood, except for all the ones who are still conforming to social expectations of women because they’re obviously The Enemy(tm). She’s not like other girls- she’s far more enlightened. She’s openly a lesbian and has some terfy leanings.

Hannah is the athlete, the star of the girls’ basketball team and the girls’ track team. She scoffs at weak, shallow girls who don’t have the wherewithal to go through the intense training she does, as well as scoffing at the frivolity that comes along with it. They care far too much about clothes and make-up and boys and she doesn’t have time for any of them.

Gertrude is a tomboy, kind of plain and unassuming and frequently mistaken for a boy. She’s “just one of the guys” and prefers it that way, because girls have too much drama and boys are just easier to talk to in general. She’s never worn a dress in her life and jokes about how much it “burns” if make-up even comes near her. Everyone assumes she’s a lesbian but she’s not.

Eloise is the smartest girl in school. She gets straight-a’s, wins academic awards left and right, and has never missed a day of school in her life. Everyone already knows she’s going to be valedictorian and they’re only sophomores. She, too, has recently discovered feminism, and knows exactly what to do with it- she spends quite a lot of time talking down to the other girls in school for not being more like she thinks they ought to.

So you’ve got these five girls, and you’ve got this secret organization who are researching genetic engineering. And for some plothole reason they need a bunch of teenage girls to subject to some experiments to do with superheroes. And they decide to pick the girls who are The Most(tm) because they’ll be best suited for some reason. And the girls consent, and next thing you know you’ve got these five ordinary teenage girls who now have superpowers and have become very technopunk magical girls and are helping the secret organization to save the world or something idk I’ll think of it later.

The point is, most of the character development across the story is going to be about the girls becoming better people and learning and growing and realizing that “not like other girls” shouldn’t be a weapon against each other, and they shouldn’t be competing for the approval of men but instead uplifting and supporting each other.

Hope and the Dark Destroyer: Superhero story about a depressed and nervy superhero, and his supervillain who doubles as his best friend and biggest supporter, and then all the other heroes and villains who join the cast later one. Tag is ‘hope and the dark destroyer’ but when I’m talking about it I’m more likely to refer to it as “Hope and Dark” or “Hope/Dark”. (That’s not a pairing slash; to avoid confusion, the official pairing name is “Dark/Hope”.)

The Andias Chronicle/Rhell: A humbling coming of age story about four teens who get stuck stopping a divine war, partly because they were indirectly responsible for the guy trying to start it and partially because the god of stopping divine wars is also the god of not doing your fucking job. Takes place in the world of Rhell, and occasionally I talk about other aspects of it as well. The tag is ‘the andias chronicles’, and can be found both here and on my other blog.

Shark Teens: Growing up story about Keahi Kahale and Stanley Stasney, young teen boys living on an island and getting into regular teen trouble with their friends. You know, the usual things- staying out past curfew, jaywalking, being out of class without a hall pass, stopping a crew of alien scientists from stealing humans to sell as pets on the alien black market, helping a pod of weresharks mediate territorial disputes, holding library books out past their due date. You know, teen stuff. Tagged under ‘shark teens’.

R.O.H.G.E.: Magical girl story about five teen girls (and one teen boy) who have powers through the use of genetic tampering, and in saving the world learn to grow as people and stop thinking of each other as enemies and rather as allies. Very strong themes of female friendship and its importance, and a lot of trope subversion alongside. Tagged under ‘rohge’ but sometimes I mistype so there’s probably some content under ‘roghe’ as well.