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So this is the first time I’m gonna be doing an “explainer”/extended author’s note/commentary type thing for fics I write. Might do more of these in the future if I feel like the fic is dense enough, had enough thought put into it, or has a lot of refs that people might not be able to recognize. Most of it’s gonna be the latter for this round. Gonna take it roughly chapter-by-chapter, so hit the relevant section cut if you wanna skip to a particular one.
Since this is a crossover, I decided to put together an AU that blends both PolarDread and Deltarune’s canons together. Basically, all of the PolarDread animatronic characters are now Lightner monsters, but they’re also still entertainers at Cloud 9… performing under the group name “Cloud 9”. I guess. Although for the sake of organization/continuity I split them into the “Main Stage unit” (Snark, Perry, Vicky) and “Level 2 unit” (Slush, Whack, Floppy, and Antler). Yeah. The game doesn’t formally name the separate performance units, so I just used these uncreative placeholders. I don’t even know if the Level 2 unit performs together, or if they’re all on separate stages/attractions/etc. I just grouped them together because it would make more sense in an idol-esque context. (Let’s be real: animatronic stage shows are just robo-idols with a different coat of paint if you think about it.)
(also there is no RCMP influenced shit in this AU because I said so.)
As for where exactly it takes place, it’s either Toronto or the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, because Squeaks can’t seem to make up his mind as to which of the two it is. Although maybe the may-or-may-not-be-happening recode will canonize it for sure. Hopefully. If it even drops.
So as stated in the author’s note on AO3, my main inspo for pleasecyber.me was those weird international dating sites that advertise themselves in sidebar ads of piracy-adjacent websites or in people’s spam boxes (case in point: the “Charming Russian Girls Waiting to Meet You!” one that got highlighted in Alex Rochon’s video where he reads out actual spam emails in character as Spamton). Since I got assigned “Mail-Order Bride” as one of my tropes in the Keep Fandom Weird bingo, I decided to put a more modern spin on it by getting Spamton to have an account on one of these sites. (And yeah, I know there’s a difference between the mail-order brides of the late 19th/early 20th century and international dating sites, but seeing as a lot of news exposés draw a lot of parallels between the two, I went this route. Please don’t sue me.) And even though I may not have said as much in the text, the rapidly-growing “AI Girlfriend/Boyfriend” trend was a pretty big inspo as well. And then I modelled everything in pleasecyber.me after the inhabitants of Cyber City. Or at least I did in my mind and tried to translate it to text.
Also in case no one could tell already, the website URL literally says “Please Cyber Me”. As in “please exchange erotic messages online with me”. The site itself was supposed to be called “PleaseCyber”, but I never actually used that name. Even though I should have instead of typing out the URL every time.
I don’t know why I put the 19+ as opposed to 18+ age limit in pleasecyber.me. Maybe as a way to equalize it with the drinking/smoking/gambling age limits in Ontario, but now that I think about it, I like the idea of a shifty online site messing with expected details just a tad. Even if it’s counterproductive to them.
The “doll” that’s supposed to be in the “John Doe from Dildo, NL” profile pic actually comes from this old-ass promo image for PolarDread (at least, I’m assuming that’s what it is). Basically implying that Snark spilled wine all over its face and upper body.
The reason why I chose “28 years ago” is because that would be 1997 at the time of writing.
The “Lumber Lemming sanctuary” bit was inspired by two things: 1) this Tumblr post, and 2) the commonly-troped stock lie about a child’s recently-put-down pet being “sent to a farm”.
One of my major inspirations for writing Spamton in this fic was random profiles of boomer/GenX-aged underground rock musicians I found on Facebook, usually sourced from the comments sections of random venues in the US. (although one of them was French instead of American) And one of them had this typing quirk of putting a large string of random occult/magic-themed ASCII characters and emojis under every text post, so I decided to adapt that to Spamton and theme it around him (emails, telephones, money symbols). I just did it for the one post, though. Would be a screen reader nightmare otherwise. Assuming the rest of Spam’s dialogue isn’t already that…
I wanted to put the stock “wrong person” scam intro in here somehow, but I was at a loss on how to implement it without getting too complicated or OOC. But then I realized I could flip it and have that be the basis for a bait instead of the scam itself. I settled on using “Mike” because I knew it’d piss Spamton off, but I didn’t have a solid idea on how to end it at first. But then I realized I could use one of those vulgar-sounding fake names, so I used that. And ended it kind of abruptly from there, but I framed it as a “too stunned to speak” type situation.
While in the process of writing this fic, I made an observation on Blorbo.social that I was pulling a variation of the fanfic cliche where people use “paperwork” as a catch-all for everything their blorbo does at work… but since Snark is involved in the performance industry, he’s always at “rehearsals” instead. Except I did end up dipping into the “paperwork” trope by way of making him answer work emails. So yeah.
I was pretty proud of myself for being able to work 3 layers into the “working in the entertainment industry does a number on your throat” line. Implying he gets a sore throat on the regular, sucks dick (in the literal sense), and sucks dick (as in: sucks really bad at performing). All at the same time.
The [[Vynil]] typo was another quirk I picked up from the random FB profile thing and reapplied to Spamton. Particularly because that would 100% be a typo he’d use.
I had to look up a list of technology centres on Wikipedia for the part where Snark spitballs where “Cyber City” would be in the real world, because the only two that came to mind were Silicon Valley and Akibahara (even though Akibahara is kinda distinct from the places that are listed on that article). And then I found out that there’s a section of Ottawa (Bayview Yards) that is enough of a technology epicentre to have been named “Silicon Valley North” at one point. Now, I don’t know if this part of Ottawa actually smells like sewage, because I haven’t been in there enough to know for sure. But there are parts of Ottawa that smell really bad. Especially on the light-rail lines. I think it’s because the water is polluted? At least that’s what my sis tells me.
When I first heard the term “awebo” (onomatopoeia for the call of the willow ptarmigan), I immediately thought it sounded like it would have been listed in that one copypasta about weird streaming service names (the “poob has it for you” one). So I decided to use it for the chat app that Spamton begs Snark to go to.
Spamton’s screen name for Awebo is not, in fact, a random keysmash. It’s just “spamtongspamton” but in Beaverscratch (the cypher code used in Squeaks’ more notable project, Shipwrecked 64) and with 1997 tacked onto the end.
For the scene where Perry asks Snark about the charge from pleasecyber.me getting on his credit card, i wasn’t sure whether I wanted to have him show it on a phone or on a laptop. The combination of outdated hardware leaving him vulnerable and his favorite game not being available for newer models worked for both, but I ended up deciding on the phone in the end.
I don’t know if these types of apps still exist, but back in the mid-2010s before I actually had a smartphone, I used my iPod touch as one. For the most part, I was able to use the iMessage app, but I couldn’t use it with my mom’s phone once she switched to Android. So I found an app that gave my iPod a fake phone number and used that to text Mom’s Android phone. No clue how this didn’t give my iPod a virus. But I decided to make up a similar app for the fic to get around Awebo’s phone number issue. And in the process I guess I made Snark totally disregard his own Internet safety spiel he gave Perry earlier, further hammering in how down-bad he became towards Spamton without realizing yet.
Also for those playing along at home: Spamton’s number is basically 555-BIG-SHOT.
My main inspo for Larch Bay was this cottage rental attached to a campground that I went to with my family as a child for two summers. It wasn’t in the Kawartha region, but I did use the website for it as inspo when writing Snark looking up the Larch Bay site for the first time, as a reference to how much the rental would cost, and to get better visuals when writing his actual arrival.
So here’s where the “character has had bottom surgery” tag comes in. I wrote Snark as having undergone phalloplasty (bc I HC him as a post-everything trans guy because of a throwaway line in the Sub Zero developer commentary where he was originally envisioned as a woman). But I didn’t explicitly state this headcanon out loud, partially because I didn’t want to get into a whole write-this-into-the-fic-in-excruciating-detail thing. But I still wanted it to be present in the fic at the same time, as opposed to other people who get around the “not wanting to go into excruciating detail about character X’s transness” thing by writing them as bascially cis but with the quote-unquote “opposite” genitalia. Key points to note: a) the part where he activates/deactivates the implant by squeezing his ball, b) the complete lack of lubrication from precum, and c) not actually shooting rope, but experiencing physiological pleasure at climax nonetheless.
This was the first part of the fic I wrote. Don’t know why, but I did. Maybe it was before I had come up with the overarching scambaiting plot that would connect the tropes on my bingo card. But I’m glad I did, because I tend to have difficulty writing good endings because I save them for last and write them while burned out and ready to move onto something new. So maybe I oughtta use this strat in the future.
So yeah, that’s basically it. Shoulda uploaded this sooner, but I’m glad I got it overwith before Christmas gets in the way of everything. Maybe if I do other longass fics in the future I’ll do another one of these. Or maybe if I do a 5K+ one. Whatever. This was fun.
Since this is a crossover, I decided to put together an AU that blends both PolarDread and Deltarune’s canons together. Basically, all of the PolarDread animatronic characters are now Lightner monsters, but they’re also still entertainers at Cloud 9… performing under the group name “Cloud 9”. I guess. Although for the sake of organization/continuity I split them into the “Main Stage unit” (Snark, Perry, Vicky) and “Level 2 unit” (Slush, Whack, Floppy, and Antler). Yeah. The game doesn’t formally name the separate performance units, so I just used these uncreative placeholders. I don’t even know if the Level 2 unit performs together, or if they’re all on separate stages/attractions/etc. I just grouped them together because it would make more sense in an idol-esque context. (Let’s be real: animatronic stage shows are just robo-idols with a different coat of paint if you think about it.)
(also there is no RCMP influenced shit in this AU because I said so.)
As for where exactly it takes place, it’s either Toronto or the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, because Squeaks can’t seem to make up his mind as to which of the two it is. Although maybe the may-or-may-not-be-happening recode will canonize it for sure. Hopefully. If it even drops.
So as stated in the author’s note on AO3, my main inspo for pleasecyber.me was those weird international dating sites that advertise themselves in sidebar ads of piracy-adjacent websites or in people’s spam boxes (case in point: the “Charming Russian Girls Waiting to Meet You!” one that got highlighted in Alex Rochon’s video where he reads out actual spam emails in character as Spamton). Since I got assigned “Mail-Order Bride” as one of my tropes in the Keep Fandom Weird bingo, I decided to put a more modern spin on it by getting Spamton to have an account on one of these sites. (And yeah, I know there’s a difference between the mail-order brides of the late 19th/early 20th century and international dating sites, but seeing as a lot of news exposés draw a lot of parallels between the two, I went this route. Please don’t sue me.) And even though I may not have said as much in the text, the rapidly-growing “AI Girlfriend/Boyfriend” trend was a pretty big inspo as well. And then I modelled everything in pleasecyber.me after the inhabitants of Cyber City. Or at least I did in my mind and tried to translate it to text.
Also in case no one could tell already, the website URL literally says “Please Cyber Me”. As in “please exchange erotic messages online with me”. The site itself was supposed to be called “PleaseCyber”, but I never actually used that name. Even though I should have instead of typing out the URL every time.
I don’t know why I put the 19+ as opposed to 18+ age limit in pleasecyber.me. Maybe as a way to equalize it with the drinking/smoking/gambling age limits in Ontario, but now that I think about it, I like the idea of a shifty online site messing with expected details just a tad. Even if it’s counterproductive to them.
The “doll” that’s supposed to be in the “John Doe from Dildo, NL” profile pic actually comes from this old-ass promo image for PolarDread (at least, I’m assuming that’s what it is). Basically implying that Snark spilled wine all over its face and upper body.
The reason why I chose “28 years ago” is because that would be 1997 at the time of writing.
The “Lumber Lemming sanctuary” bit was inspired by two things: 1) this Tumblr post, and 2) the commonly-troped stock lie about a child’s recently-put-down pet being “sent to a farm”.
One of my major inspirations for writing Spamton in this fic was random profiles of boomer/GenX-aged underground rock musicians I found on Facebook, usually sourced from the comments sections of random venues in the US. (although one of them was French instead of American) And one of them had this typing quirk of putting a large string of random occult/magic-themed ASCII characters and emojis under every text post, so I decided to adapt that to Spamton and theme it around him (emails, telephones, money symbols). I just did it for the one post, though. Would be a screen reader nightmare otherwise. Assuming the rest of Spam’s dialogue isn’t already that…
I wanted to put the stock “wrong person” scam intro in here somehow, but I was at a loss on how to implement it without getting too complicated or OOC. But then I realized I could flip it and have that be the basis for a bait instead of the scam itself. I settled on using “Mike” because I knew it’d piss Spamton off, but I didn’t have a solid idea on how to end it at first. But then I realized I could use one of those vulgar-sounding fake names, so I used that. And ended it kind of abruptly from there, but I framed it as a “too stunned to speak” type situation.
While in the process of writing this fic, I made an observation on Blorbo.social that I was pulling a variation of the fanfic cliche where people use “paperwork” as a catch-all for everything their blorbo does at work… but since Snark is involved in the performance industry, he’s always at “rehearsals” instead. Except I did end up dipping into the “paperwork” trope by way of making him answer work emails. So yeah.
I was pretty proud of myself for being able to work 3 layers into the “working in the entertainment industry does a number on your throat” line. Implying he gets a sore throat on the regular, sucks dick (in the literal sense), and sucks dick (as in: sucks really bad at performing). All at the same time.
The [[Vynil]] typo was another quirk I picked up from the random FB profile thing and reapplied to Spamton. Particularly because that would 100% be a typo he’d use.
I had to look up a list of technology centres on Wikipedia for the part where Snark spitballs where “Cyber City” would be in the real world, because the only two that came to mind were Silicon Valley and Akibahara (even though Akibahara is kinda distinct from the places that are listed on that article). And then I found out that there’s a section of Ottawa (Bayview Yards) that is enough of a technology epicentre to have been named “Silicon Valley North” at one point. Now, I don’t know if this part of Ottawa actually smells like sewage, because I haven’t been in there enough to know for sure. But there are parts of Ottawa that smell really bad. Especially on the light-rail lines. I think it’s because the water is polluted? At least that’s what my sis tells me.
When I first heard the term “awebo” (onomatopoeia for the call of the willow ptarmigan), I immediately thought it sounded like it would have been listed in that one copypasta about weird streaming service names (the “poob has it for you” one). So I decided to use it for the chat app that Spamton begs Snark to go to.
Spamton’s screen name for Awebo is not, in fact, a random keysmash. It’s just “spamtongspamton” but in Beaverscratch (the cypher code used in Squeaks’ more notable project, Shipwrecked 64) and with 1997 tacked onto the end.
For the scene where Perry asks Snark about the charge from pleasecyber.me getting on his credit card, i wasn’t sure whether I wanted to have him show it on a phone or on a laptop. The combination of outdated hardware leaving him vulnerable and his favorite game not being available for newer models worked for both, but I ended up deciding on the phone in the end.
I don’t know if these types of apps still exist, but back in the mid-2010s before I actually had a smartphone, I used my iPod touch as one. For the most part, I was able to use the iMessage app, but I couldn’t use it with my mom’s phone once she switched to Android. So I found an app that gave my iPod a fake phone number and used that to text Mom’s Android phone. No clue how this didn’t give my iPod a virus. But I decided to make up a similar app for the fic to get around Awebo’s phone number issue. And in the process I guess I made Snark totally disregard his own Internet safety spiel he gave Perry earlier, further hammering in how down-bad he became towards Spamton without realizing yet.
Also for those playing along at home: Spamton’s number is basically 555-BIG-SHOT.
My main inspo for Larch Bay was this cottage rental attached to a campground that I went to with my family as a child for two summers. It wasn’t in the Kawartha region, but I did use the website for it as inspo when writing Snark looking up the Larch Bay site for the first time, as a reference to how much the rental would cost, and to get better visuals when writing his actual arrival.
So here’s where the “character has had bottom surgery” tag comes in. I wrote Snark as having undergone phalloplasty (bc I HC him as a post-everything trans guy because of a throwaway line in the Sub Zero developer commentary where he was originally envisioned as a woman). But I didn’t explicitly state this headcanon out loud, partially because I didn’t want to get into a whole write-this-into-the-fic-in-excruciating-detail thing. But I still wanted it to be present in the fic at the same time, as opposed to other people who get around the “not wanting to go into excruciating detail about character X’s transness” thing by writing them as bascially cis but with the quote-unquote “opposite” genitalia. Key points to note: a) the part where he activates/deactivates the implant by squeezing his ball, b) the complete lack of lubrication from precum, and c) not actually shooting rope, but experiencing physiological pleasure at climax nonetheless.
This was the first part of the fic I wrote. Don’t know why, but I did. Maybe it was before I had come up with the overarching scambaiting plot that would connect the tropes on my bingo card. But I’m glad I did, because I tend to have difficulty writing good endings because I save them for last and write them while burned out and ready to move onto something new. So maybe I oughtta use this strat in the future.
So yeah, that’s basically it. Shoulda uploaded this sooner, but I’m glad I got it overwith before Christmas gets in the way of everything. Maybe if I do other longass fics in the future I’ll do another one of these. Or maybe if I do a 5K+ one. Whatever. This was fun.
