Category: fandom ocs and stories

IW au: Howdie Finds Invisible Wally

Posted on July 18, 2023 by qkzgirl

Howdie finds Wally (But he doesn’t know it)

Who knew something as simple as trying to add a little spice to your routine would lead to finding something impossible?

No one can see it, but Wally is very wigged out at being found/discovered.

Home, recognizing that staying inside forever isn’t good for one’s mental health (even if they don’t know the full details), gently coaxed Wally into going out for a while and getting some fresh air. It would probably be a good idea to go out for a walk at the very least. Stand in the sunshine, touch the grass, and so on.

But, this is how Howdie ends up being the first to find Invisible Wally. He later gently convinces the silent, invisible person to come to the bodega for a while so he can make sure they really are okay.

(And ends up with a new, temporary roommate. Home sees him carefully leading an invisible person to his home and decides that this could actually be a good thing for Wally.)

[Consistency? Don’t know her. aka, I did a lot of experimenting while doing these]

Howdie is very hard to draw. I need to practice drawing him.

IW AU: Who Finds Wally and Starts to Unravel What’s Happened?

Posted on July 16, 2023 by qkzgirl

WARNING!! This au discusses heavy topics and potentially triggering topics such as Fear, Depression, Mental/Emotional Abuse, Unreality, and Mental Manipulation. Welcome Home is a horror project and, while I tend to lean toward hurt/comfort in my stories, there still has to be HURT for there to be healing/comfort in the story.

That’s an excellent question that needs to be addressed too. I’m honestly not sure how it would go. If it would all fall on one character, or if multiple would end up tackling the mystery from different angles without knowing. But I can think of at least 3 good starting points for it all.

Let me go over them;

One option/perspective is Barnaby B Beagle: being Wally’s Best Friend means he would have a very large Wally Shaped hole in his day. He may shrug it off for a day or two (maybe, before all the Script stuff started, Wally was the sort to need “Me” days or just quiet days where he wanted to be alone and Barnaby still remembered that fact), but a whole week? With no one in town seeing him? Now that was just weird.

Plus, when something happens to the main character, it’s up to the Best Friend to fix it and find out what happened.

(And the feeling of a Watcher, one that was very intense at his back would break the illusion for Barnaby. No matter how well collected he’d been before then.)

Something that was urging him to find his friend quickly, yet also telling him to be funny and make jokes at the same time. (He’s the comic relief, he’s supposed to keep the tone light) How was he supposed to be funny when his best friend was missing? Missing people was a serious thing!

The contrast in tones that were being forced on him would be what finally made Barnaby self-aware and snap him to “reality” for their neighborhood.

It would be a… distressing discovery. Even for someone who was as relaxed as him.

Another potential perspective is Frank Frankly: People like him (me included) and he seems like someone who pays a lot of attention to small details and to routines. As such, he could notice that Wally didn’t seem to be following his routine all of a sudden and that Home seemed oddly distressed yet very reluctant to share why.

His urge to know facts, to know the truth, could probably push him to find out what was going on with the town’s resident artist.

He’d make lists, try to gather information from his fellow neighbors, and build a theory/deduction from there.

(Since he’s friends with Julie, it’s possible she could get dragged in as well.)

But, slowly, as he searches and investigates, he starts to notice things. Strange things. Things that don’t quite seem right once he’s started putting them together and trying to find patterns to them.

People not reacting the way he feels they should to his questions. All of them oddly blase about Wally being potentially missing. (Except for Barnaby, who seems strangely… Jumpy? Stressed? He’s not acting like he usually does.)

And, thanks to his methodical approach, he figures it out.

Achievement Unlocked: Frank is now Self-Aware! XD

And the last one (which I think would be interesting/funny/potentially really sweet) is Howdie Pillar: The running gag is him having to defend his apples from Wally, so the idea that he notices something is off because he’s not having to do that is really funny. Like, “Where’s that little gremlin gone? He’s not bothering me, what is he doing??”

Or “Huh, Wally should have come by for his weekly grocery run by now. I wonder why he hasn’t yet…”

He’s also the one who seems to have the closest thing to an “antagonistic” relationship with Wally (mostly over his Apple theft and inability to tell a joke), which makes him being one of the people to notice that Wally’s gone really fun to explore.

(I also just like the funky caterpillar man and think that him finding Invisible Wally first and trying to slowly help him back to visibility is really sweet.)

He may not even realize the invisible person he’s found is Wally. Just that he’s found someone that can’t be seen and can’t seem to speak wandering around (maybe he almost trips over him), and decides to invite them to stay with him for a bit. If only so he can make sure nothing happens to them.

If no one could see or hear them, how would they get help if they got hurt? It’s his duty as a responsible person to help!

And, hey, maybe Poppy has heard of something like this before? She knows a lot of stuff about people’s health, there might be something she can do about it! It couldn’t hurt to ask her.

He’d ask Frank, but he’s really focused on trying to figure out what’s happened to Wally. And he doesn’t want to distract him, because he’s worried about where their resident artist went too.

But helping this mystery person is a good distraction. They seem nice, if almost shy, once he figures out a way for them to talk to him. (Sure, it’s mostly yes or no questions, but they’re getting there!)

It’s nice to be more than just “The Shopkeeper” with someone. To let himself share things he liked and spend time with someone who wasn’t a customer…

(Actually, when was the last time he actually tried to get to know someone? Or let them get to know him?)

IW AU: How Things Start to Fall Apart

Posted on July 16, 2023 by qkzgirl

While Wally is still hiding in Home’s walls, silently convinced that his turning Invisible won’t matter to anyone, there are things happening outside that Home gets to see unfold. And they’re very unsure if they should be relaying it to Wally or not.

What Wally doesn’t know is that his disappearance, and the Audience’s inability to find him, does have an effect on everyone. It’s just not an immediate, obvious one.

His not coming out over the span of that week was a shift in everyone’s lives, one that sent ripples of unease through the neighbors.

The Schedule was built around Wally’s day after he left Home and while everyone was able to “fill in” the spots where he should have been without raising alarm, some of them still noticed that something (or rather someone) was missing.

I’m not sure who would be the first to really notice that something wasn’t right. But someone does and it triggers a domino effect for the rest of town.

The neighbors notice, Wally’s friends notice, it just takes a bit for them to go into motion.

As for the Audience…

Once they start harassing everyone else over their Script, things start to fall apart in short order. Unlike Wally, they weren’t self-aware prior to this event. They didn’t know about the script or that they weren’t really acting like themselves.

But suddenly, having this impossible Thing looming over them is very hard to ignore, with all its unspoken demands and fiercely trying to press its will on them. Add in Wally’s disappearance and the sudden awareness that there’s something there that hadn’t always been there, and it quickly becomes something they are not ready OR WILLING to deal with when their friend is missing/possibly in danger.

And, frankly, unlike the quiet, gentle painter of the Neighborhood, they aren’t as passive and easily usable.

(part of that was due to the Audience’s control over them all being something gradual. It didn’t snap into place all at once.)

They don’t know how to handle what’s happening (considering the idyllic nature of the world/place they live in) and they quickly spiral off script and break character like crazy once this new, unexpected pressure is applied to them. Because there isn’t a precedent for how they should be reacting to all of this.

Suddenly the unseen watcher is quickly losing control of them all and it really doesn’t like it.

Eventually, it throws a fit and, like a child throwing the mother-of-all-tantrums, it (accidentally) destroys its connection to the Neighborhood and releases everyone from its control.

(Needless to say, there’s a subtle town-wide identity crisis. Everyone has a decent idea of who they are, but they’ve spent years acting like caricatures of themselves and need to reground themselves a wee bit.)

But a lot of them set it aside as it dawns on them that maybe this was why Wally always seemed off. Maybe he knew about this but had been unable to say.

Maybe this was why he was missing.

Eventually, they manage to find him (with at least one of them piecing together that the invisible person they found was their missing resident) and the healing, for all of them, can finally start.

And that’s all I have so far. But I am gonna workshop more for this.

Invisible Wally AU: The main deets

Posted on July 16, 2023 by qkzgirl

WARNING!!! The content of this AU will get upsetting at times because I’m also explaining/exploring the root feelings that cause the Invisibility! So please be aware that there will be discussions of fear, depression, self-depreciation, un-reality, and emotional abuse/manipulation.

I usually have a pretty gentle hand when it comes to these topics, but they are still present.

Quick Explanation of the Invisibility before I get into the AU: In Moomins, they say that Invisibility is caused by being scared. The character who was invisible, a little girl named Ninny, had been in the care of her very mean/verbally cruel Aunt and turned invisible because of how awfully her aunt treated her. And it took the care/kindness of the Moomin family who wanted to both see and know her that got her to become visible again.

It’s very much an abuse victim reaction/mindset, but I don’t think it’s the only kind of “fear” that could cause invisibility.

As someone who went through a bout of depression in middle/high school and decided that I didn’t want to have people notice me, I tend to liken that “Fear” to it too.

Fear of being noticed or a bother to people around you that you care about (and plenty that you don’t even know). Fear of people you love growing to hate you/not want you around. Fear of being hurt again because the people around you won’t want to see or be around the “real” you if they saw it.

The invisibility isn’t just being unseen; nothing the person writes can be seen either, and they have no voice and can’t make sounds with instruments. It’s genuinely like they aren’t there EXCEPT: They’re still physical (able to touch and be touched) and they still cast a shadow.

With that done, let’s get into the au!

Invisible Wally AU:

First off; Wally starts as the only one in Home that’s Self-Aware, as such he’s carrying the brunt of the Audience’s attention, good and bad. (Technically, Home is also self-aware but it doesn’t get even half the weight of this as Wally does.)

For the entire day, when he’s outside Home (and even when he isn’t sometimes) he can feel the weight of the Audience’s gaze on his back and the pressing Need for everything to be perfect, all the time. From the styling of his hair to his clothes to the way he talks, everything has to be perfect. Perfectly in place and perfectly blank. No getting angry, no getting frustrated, no sadness, no wanting to be alone, not being able to say “No” when someone else wants to do something, nothing that wouldn’t be seen as “negative” in some form. Like the host of a Daytime TV show, he can’t be seen as anything but agreeable and willing to go along with anything he’s asked.

That feeling doesn’t leave until nightfall, quickly becoming the only time Wally feels like he can breathe and be himself.

Where he can groan in frustration, wrap himself in heavy blankets and lay on the floor in a heap, screaming into pillows and throwing them around, complain to Home about the tedium that’s driving him mad.

(He used to like bright colors, but now he hates them and wishes he could wear something, anything, else instead.)

After a while, he notes that he and Home seem to realize something is wrong. They’re the only ones to notice/feel this impossible pressure to always be “TV ready” as he’s started thinking of it. They just go through their days following the pre-decided, unspoken “schedule” that’s fallen over their neighborhood.

If anything, they seem happy with everything happening. (Perfectly Happy, even.)

And it’s wearing him down because when he tries to defy those Needs, he gets “punished” for it.

Trying to refuse to do something, like not going out for the day, makes his anxiety (which he did not have prior to this) spike wildly, driving him into a panic that usually forces him to follow the “plan” of the day. Trying to speak up makes his throat close up or for the wrong words to start spilling out. He can’t argue against something that someone else wants to do, even if he tried (and he has, on several occasions).

He feels trapped, and that this “Audience” doesn’t actually give a damn about him, just the entertainment he can act as a vehicle for.

They don’t want to hear what he thinks or feels, they don’t even want to see real him. Just the alternate “Perfect” version that follows their direction without voice or resistance. And that idea spreads, over time, until he wonders if his friends even care about the real him, or just the Perfect version that they’ve been interacting with.

These thoughts are what make him start to disappear, starting with his voice which grows fainter and fainter with each passing day. (And yet no one seems to notice how much quieter he is.)

When he starts to visibly fade from sight, Home tries to help by keeping him inside. They think that, if they can keep him out of the Audience’s view (even for just a little while) Wally will start to feel/get better.

Unfortunately, this isn’t as helpful as Home thinks it is.

“Leaving Home” is part of the schedule and not doing that trigger’s a “punishment” for Wally. He knows that Home was trying to help, but Home doesn’t feel the Audience’s displeasure the same way Wally did. Thankfully, “sick” days seem to allow some leeway, so he’s able to spend at least one day alone with just Home for company.

Then Home keeps him in another day, and then another, and another, until he’s spent almost a week inside Home instead of following the Script of the Day. (And suffering the punishments for not doing so) He feels like a miserable wreck, has probably cried a few times, and just…

He feels terrible.

But what makes it worse (in Wally’s mind) is the fact that none of his friends come looking for him.

He hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone in a week (other than Home), and yet no one came by to try and find out what was wrong. And Home hadn’t mentioned anyone trying to speak with them. It was like no one had even noticed that he wasn’t there.

And that thought stings. It hurts. It hurt much more than he’d thought it could.

(He had hoped that had been real, on some level. That they cared about HIM and not the Perfect him. Maybe he’d been wrong…)

He goes to bed that night with an aching heart and climbs out the next morning completely invisible and completely silent.

Home, of course, is panicked. They had seen him fading, slowing vanishing before their eyes but there had been nothing they could do. They hadn’t been able to stop it, all they could do was curse the Audience for starting all of this.

Strangely though, there’s relief. The Audience can’t see him anymore and, though he can feel their displeasure at not being able to find him, he can’t feel a “punishment” taking hold of him. He still feels miserable, but it feels like a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He can’t be forced to follow the script if no one can see him, he can do what he wants, go where he liked, and no one would be able to stop him.

(But there was nowhere he wanted to go, few things he wanted to do. He had the options, but no drive to follow them through…)

Through a bit of trial and error, the two build a new “normal”.

They figure out that, while he can’t be seen or heard, Home can still feel where Wally is and, if he taps on things using the same morse code that Home uses, they can still “Talk” to each other. Which soothes some of Home’s fears, since they now know where he is and can still check on him.

It takes a bit for them to figure out the other details of this strange situation. Like how far the invisibility extends.

Whatever Wally wears/puts on will turn invisible too, and the stuff he takes off will turn visible again after a while. He finds clothes in muted colors at the back of his wardrobe and ends up making them his “standard” clothes while in this state. No one but he and Home know they’re there, but the control it gives him helps his mood a bit. It was nice knowing that he wasn’t letting himself be completely controlled by the Need to be Perfect anymore.

What ends up distressing Wally the most is that he can’t seem to paint anymore. When he tries to put paint on canvas, it’s as invisible as he is. As an artist (and as someone who just enjoyed painting) this was understandably upsetting since painting had been one of the few outlets he had for his feelings.

He spends a lot of his time puttering around and wrestling with his emotions and the situation he’s found himself in.

Of course, that’s just Wally’s side of things.

Invisible Wally AU

Posted on July 16, 2023 by qkzgirl

I originally wrote and shared this au idea for Welcome Home on tumblr, but I like it a lot so I figure, why not share it here too?

Wally is done in those pale outlines so people can see/know what he looks like when he’s in this state. Wally himself is totally invisible, so his friends have no idea where he is until he’s “recovered” enough for them to see his clothing again.

Simple Sum of the Invisible Wally AU

(because I started writing so much that I realized it would be better if I gave it its own post instead)

Wally and Home were the only Self-Aware members of the neighborhood but Wally, as the “Main Character”, shouldered the brunt of the Audience’s attention and their displeasure if he tried to go off script or break the routine.

He started crumbling under the pressure to be “Perfect” all the time whenever he left his house and being forced to adhere to the “TV Ready” state at all hours.

He starts falling into the mindset of “They don’t care about me. They don’t want to see or hear the Real me, just the Perfect one they’ve made” which causes him to start fading from sight and making his voice fainter and fainter.

Home tries to help, but their attempts just make the whole thing worse.

Then, one morning, Wally climbs out of bed and realizes that he’s just… Gone.

He can see the shape of himself under the covers of his bed, but he can’t see himself. Even his clothes are invisible. And he can’t make a sound either.

It’s like he’s not even there.

But, he can’t help wondering, is that really such a bad thing? It’s not like anyone wanted me around before.

Obviously, stuff happens, the audience’s control snaps, and Wally’s friends go Yes, actually, your disappearing IS a bad thing and we do care about you and we are going to prove it by helping you as best we can no matter how long it takes so there.

Matwilo of the Unovan Gerudo

Posted on June 10, 2022 by qkzgirl

Did some design planning to figure out how Matwilo looks. I mean, I obviously have the design I made in PLA (since I used him as my player character), but I needed to figure out how he would look as I drew/described him in the story. I’ll post colored versions of these drawings later.

Like making it clear that, as a Gerudo, he is a stronk boi. He gets to be a lil’ biff, as a treat.

Also, he thinks Hisui (Sinnoh) is way too cold and is always dressed in multiple layers. He’s a desert child, snow is not his element.

The Buff body type can be seen here
Walk, Walk, Fashion Baby
His hair is short and messy

PLA and LoZ: Matwilo

Posted on June 7, 2022 by qkzgirl

Just because I feel like talking about OCs today, I’ve decided to bust out the one I came up with (and dug very deep into) while first playing Pokemon Legends Arceus. Since I, like every Nintendo player at the time, made the connection of it being like BotW. Because of that, I made him based around the idea of writing a crossover (kinda) with him.

His name is Matwilo and he’s a Gerudo. But despite being the sole male born in his generation, he is NOT the King. And the tribe he was born to live in the Unova Desert. (This will make sense in a second I promise.)

The Gerudo in Unova are survivors of the Great Flood. (aka the Adult timeline for Legend of Zelda. The same timeline as Winwaker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks.)

They managed to escape drowning thanks to the prophetic warning given by the goddesses, though they were separated from a large number of their fellow tribeswomen. (At least, many hoped they had all just been separated and not, well, I’m sure you can guess the alternative.) The flash floods and torrential rains frightened them all but they’d managed to survive them.

However, they quickly realized that there was something wrong with the seas. Eventually, some of the braver women took a chance and dove below the surface of the waters. And, in doing so, they figured out what the problem was.

There were no plants beneath the waves, the land was completely barren. Just like the mesa’s they’d climbed to escape the rising waters.

If there were no plants, then there was nothing for sea animals to eat. Sea animals wouldn’t go to any place where there was no food. And if there were no animals, there would be nothing for their tribe to eat either. And the mesa top’s soil quality was too low to grow food on. And even if they could, there wasn’t enough room for their tribe to live off of for very long.

Simply put, they couldn’t stay there if they wanted to survive. And the same went for the other races of Hyrule.

But the Gerudo were already somewhat nomadic (despite the presence of their Fortress/Tower), so they were unfazed by the idea of packing up and leaving everything behind. Something that wasn’t true for the other races, who were all very anchored to their homes and wouldn’t leave them easily.

So they built a ship from the little wood/supplies they had and could get their hands on and went looking for a place to settle down and build a new life and lifestyle for their daughters.

(Yes, they do the pirate thing for a bit. They collect treasure, improve their ship, and get better supplies. Not to mention build a new well of tricks and skills for their culture to thrive on.)

During a serious storm, one that could have potentially sunk them, they (unknowingly) traveled through a portal that brought them to the coast of Unova, right on the edge of the desert.

Seeing a place that was so much like their lost home, but now with the good things from their sea travels and the best things about being by the sea as well, they settled there right away and quickly established a new home for themselves. (Full set up! Fishing, smithing, farming, anything and everything to make a stable life for them all.)

They later connected with the Kingdoms to the north and built trade routes (and neutrality should their wars ever start up again. (Or if they were happening at the time?)) Also to help ensure future Gerudo tribe members. They kind of intimidated the Kingdoms when they first met, since they were trained warriors and were practically armed to the teeth, but the fear/worry is eased by the openness/friendliness the Gerudo presented.

(Being hostile/isolated was one of the things that hurt them so badly in the Flood and with Hyrule in general, so they were trying to shed that by opening themselves up to outsiders more.)

Fast forward to the Modern Era of Unova, where the Gerodo have become widespread and no one thinks twice about them.

(They also still maintain their traditions, including intense survival and combat training from a young age and teaching all their children how to pick locks and get out of traps/bindings without issue.)

Matwilo was the first son born to the tribes in centuries, but they no-one had a need/place for a King anymore. (They used a Cheif-system now, one that was earned by the potential Cheif’s own merits and not by a birthright.) So he was raised as just another member of the tribes, aside from some special training he’s given based on the few remaining knowledge of things a male Gerudo needed to know/be able to do. (Mostly magic and combat stuff their ancestors managed to write down before they could be forgotten.)

Matwilo lives at home on a smallish Equine Pokemon Ranch with his mother (who has very poor health) and a few of his Aunts and cousins. He never went on his “official” Pokemon journey, choosing to forgo it to help his family around the ranch instead. The only Pokemon he has are a Mudbray gifted to him by a cousin and a Yamask he caught in the sands.

And he’s perfectly happy with all of that.

Until, one rainy night, he wakes to (what he’s sure is) the sound of a strange voice calling his name.

He grabs his hunting knife from its spot on his bedside table, lets out his yamask, and creeps out to investigate.

If asked, he’ll never be able to say what happened next, just that the next thing he could remember was waking up on a strange beach with a professor he’d never seen or heard of before asking him if he was alive and a trio of Pokemon hovering nearby.

‘This can’t be right,’ Matwilo thought to himself. ‘Hyrulians are the ones who’re supposed to get kidnapped for Godly missions. Not Gerudo!‘

Anyway, that’s the base of the idea! Please comment or ask if you want to know more! (Please send me asks and comments about this. I have spent WAY too much time world building about this so I could write it before I was consumed by Sningo stuff. Give me the chance to babble about it!! Like how I got Matwilo’s name!)