Fan Art and Commissions #5

It's been a while since I've done one of these fan art and commission hauls.  Let's do something about that, shall we?

First up we have this piece by the artist Pelycosaur24.  Inspired by the excellent Neil Gaiman comic Marvel 1602, I wanted to see what Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase would look like if they lived in the early 17th Century.  Thus we have Percy and Annabeth 1604.

It is always a pleasure to get to work with one of my favorite artists, and this piece was worth every penny.  I had them be Spanish because the Heart of the West always goes to whoever is the most powerful Western nation at a given time.  In 1604 that was arguably still Spain.  Annabeth's outfit incorporates elements from the Kamfrau and Trossfrau of Austria, because they were women who accompanied men onto the battlefield.  That was a suggestion from Pely, who is Austrian herself.  I especially love how the outfits evoke their present day clothes, while still being true to the fashions of the 17th Century.

This next one is inspired by that crossover fanfic I wrote combing Percy Jackson and the Olympians with DJ MacHale's Pendragon.  Well, those might have been the base two, but there are other territories and sub-territories in Halla.  Thus we have Pyrrha Nikos from RWBY and Mizore Shirayuki from Rosario+Vampire, travelers from the territory of Remnant and the sub-territory of Yokai Academy, training with Loor on Zadaa.  I'm very happy to have gotten a quality work at a modest price.  As a bonus, I got Stardust-Phantom, the South African artists who made this piece, into RWBY.

Speaking of Stardust-Phantom, that brings us to our next piece.  A Crossover Christmas Carol.  Starring Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist as Ebenezer Scrooge, Weiss Schnee from RWBY as The Ghost of Christmas Past, Bolin from Legend of Korra as The Ghost of Christmas Present, Nico di Angelo from Percy Jackson as The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and Grover Underwood from Percy Jackson as Charles Dickens. 

We're blowing a turkey for Stardust-Phantom.  This one's another one relating to that Percy Jackson/Pendragon crossover.  Here we have Silena Beauregard giving Aja Killian some pegasus riding lessons and explaining a bit about the history of Camp Half-Blood.  Aja is less than thrilled at all of the potentially dangerous stuff that goes on at Camp Half-Blood.  

This one is another crossover clothes swap brought to us by BiCOV.  There was no plot to this one, I just wanted to see how they'd look in each other's clothes.  We've got Annabeth from Percy Jackson swapping with Kurumu from Rosario+Vampire, and Reyna from Heroes of Olympus swapping with Ahsoka from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  Another quality piece at a bargain price.

Sometimes the fanfictions in my head take on a life of their own.  Case in point, this piece from SophiaBlackoodArt.  I don't exactly know how or why I started pairing Reyna and Ahsoka together, it's just one of those things that kind of just happened.  Well, in the Heroes of Olympus it was said that if Reyna found love it wouldn't be with a demigod, and Rick Riordan had considered making her lesbian.  Also, Ahsoka and Bariss certainly had there moments, as though the Clone Wars writers we're doing everything short of making them a couple.  Make of this what you will.

My inadvertent shipping of Reyna and Ahsoka proved so popular I actually got fan request to commission more art of them together.  That's where this piece from an Australian artist named makeupaname.  Here we have Reyna and Ahsoka celebrating Discovery of Puerto Rico Day, which is a real holiday by the way.  The invisible dude is Millard Nullings from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  The dude you can actually see is Nico di Angelo from Percy Jackson.  

Speaking of makeupaname, we're got another piece from her.  We've got Superman, one of the most iconic heroes of the 20th Century, along side Percy Jackson, a hero of the 21st Century.  Superman is passing the torch to a new generation of heroes.  Percy isn't sure that he's worthy, but Superman is assuring him that he will do fine, that Percy made him proud, and that he knows the world will be in good hands.  

This piece is another one from LadyLoriel.  The Doctor from Doctor Who has been captured by Cthulu.  So, Dream from Neil Gaiman's Sandman has assembled a team of heroes from across time and space to save him.  We've got Percy Jackson, Bobby Pendragon, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, and Utena Tenjou from Revolutionary Girl Utena.  They're alert on the streets of an abandoned city as Dream watches over them.  

We'll finish off with another piece from LadyLoriel.  In this one, Inuyasha traveled to the present day to help the Silver Bullets fight crime, but was a bit too reckless with destruction of public property.  So a judge sentenced him to either time in jail or community service.  He opted for community service, which turned out to be volunteering at a summer camp.  So here he is with Skuld from Ah! My Goddess, Arnold from The Magic School Bus and SpongeBob SquarePants.  They're lost in the woods just as the sun is beginning to set.  SpongeBob doesn't seem to mind though.  

Well, I think that should do it for now.  Hopefully we'll be able to do this again soon.  Until then, I will see you guys next time. 

PenJackson: A Traveler for Camp Half-Blood

Well, now that we've got the bad stuff out of the way we can move on to the great and the top notch.  My absolute pride and joys, as far as fanfiction is concerned, are Penjackson: A Traveler For Camp Half-Blood and The Adventures of The Silver Bullets.  We'll talk about Penjackson, my crossover between Percy Jackson and Pendragon, first.  However, we're going to need to cover some background before we get into that.

I'm willing to bet that most of you are familiar with Percy Jackson and the Olympians, or at the very least you've probably heard of it.  Conversely, I'm willing to wager that not all of you are familiar with DJ MacHale's Pendragon series; also known as The Pendragon Adventure and Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure Through Time and Space.  With that in mind, I'll do my best to summarize the Pendragon series.  

Pendragon follows the adventures of a boy named Bobby Pendragon, who discovers that he's a member of an organization of known as the Travelers.  Travelers use the tunnel/wormhole things known as flumes to travel to other worlds known as Territories.  Territories are other planets, located in other star systems, in other universes.  The Territories are part of Halla; all of existence, or the multiverse if you will.  Territories sooner or later reach a critical turning point, and it's the Traveler's job to insure that all goes well.  Or, to put in in Traveler terms, insure that this is the way it was mean to be. The Travelers are opposed by Saint Dane; an evil shapeshifting Traveler who wants to remake Halla in his twisted image.  

Each of the Territories is unique and has a different flavor to it.  Part of what I love about the books how this means there's something new to discover in each book.  We've Medieval and snowy Denduron, the tropical ocean world of Cloral, virtual reality addicted Veelox, jungle and cat dominated Eelong, the tribal warrior world of Zadaa, corporately controlled Quillan, and last but not least Ibara.  There are three Earth Territories, each representing Earth in a different time period.  First Earth in 1937, Second Earth in the present day and Third Earth in 5010.  The Travelers relate their adventures as a series of journals they send back to friends on their home Territories, known as acolytes.  

Now, at this point I feel I ought to warn you that from here on we're going to handle some potential spoilers for Pendragon, spoilers for my fanfic and possibly a few for Percy Jackson as well, so if you don't like that sort of thing I suggest that you stop reading this post right now.  

People who want to avoid spoilers gone?  Good, now then, let's get on with it.  Keep in mind, this was from a few years ago, there are spelling mistakes and the writing isn't as polished as my writing these days.  

So, my fanfic combining Percy Jackson and Pendragon is called PenJackson: A Traveler for Camp Half-Blood.  It follows Silena Beauregard, minor character and daughter of Aphrodite, as she discovers one night, after she meets Bobby Pendragon, that she is a Traveler.  How is this possible?  You see, there's been shifts in Halla.  Series of sub-territories have opened up; Territories within Territories, if you will.  As such, these new sub-territories have there own Travelers, and Silena is the traveler from Second Camp Half-Blood.  

This was the fanfic I really came into my own, and still remains one of the pride and joys of my fanfiction career.  It gave me experience writing from a female perspective, and I know it do sound a bit stereotypicaly girly at points, but Silena is a daughter of Aphrodite, and I had I made sequels like I intended that would have gotten smoothed out thanks to character development.  

I also feel I absolutely nailed it with the balance between the Pendragon and Percy Jackson elements.  The majority of the story is Pendragon with Percy Jackson elements added for flavor, while the bits set on Second Earth are Percy Jackson with Pendragon elements added for flavor.  The characters from both series find themselves in strange new worlds they don't fully understand, but they take it in stride and do their best to figure it out.  Both series serve to compliment each other without one overwhelming the other.  I also loved how I tied the series together with each other.  I had Beckendorf be from Stony Brook and know Mark, Courtney and Bobby from school.  I set the series after Battle of the Labarinth on the Percy Jackson end of things, and between The Quillian Games and The Pilgrims of Rayne on the Pendragon end of things.  

Besides monsters from Greek Mythology appearing across Halla, perhaps the biggest tying between the series was when I revealed that Aja Killian is a demigod; specifically, a daughter of Athena.  I figured she had the personality of an Athena-girl, and she always did kind of remind me of Annabeth.  Plus, her being an orphan let me conveniently avoid any issues with parentage.  Hey, if it happens on the Earth territories, why not on the other Territories?  

I had plans for at least two sequels, one titled Silena the Great and other titled The Half-Bloods of Halla (might have had to have split that one in two).  I got some of Silena the Great done, but I didn't like the direction it was going, and I never got around to fixing that.  We'll talk more about what could have been in future posts.  

Are there bit I wish I'd written differently and thing could could have been improved?  Is the writing not as polished as my writing now?  Sure, and there's spelling and grammar errors, but overall I'm very pleased with how A Traveler for Camp Half-Blood turned out.  At the end of the day, that all a fanfiction writer should really hope to achieve.  At the end of my day I could be happy with how it turned out. 

I've been gushing enough, but you should check out PenJackson: A Traveler for Camp Half-Blood.  Next time we'll talk about the other pride and joy of my fanfiction.  See you then.