Set in an Alternate Universe that spun off from the arc Down at the Farm, the fic itself serves as a sequel to Sinder's earlier Star-Crossed
(a What If? set during Down at the Farm), its prequel Auld Lang Syne (An expanded take on The Yarn Ball arc) and TwoTwig's Symphony in Periwinkle (Set a few months after the n-ple Date arc and unfinished, though the parts relevant to this fic was already mostly wrapped up). All of which deal with the "Grapenut" (Grape + Peanut) ship and the potential sociological issues resulting from it and similar ones.
While starting out as a simple Grapenut shipping fantasy, the fic soon evolved into its own highly-detailed metaverse, complete with a large original cast and crossovers with other Housepets! fan fiction titles, the sheer number of which is far too numerous to name.
The (sadly unfinished) saga is split into four seasons. Each season is split into 20 "episodes" with an average of 3-5 chapters in length each, with a grand total of 325 chapters. It occasionally re-told elements from the actual canon (such as the Joel/King storyline and The Pete-Dragon game), and was sometimes edited when new details was revealed in the actual canon. (For example, when many of the characters' last names were revealed with the 2012 Art Evolution.)
The saga begins here. For your convenience, there is also a table of contents and list of characters. Most of the illustrations are no longer working though the majority can still be seen on Valerio Pastore's (aka Valmax) Fur Affinity page. The illustrations TwoTwig made for Symphony in Periwinkle can also be found on his DeviantArt page.
Provides Examples Of:
- Abusive Parents: Mr. Hartford mistreats Sasha, and while not technically a parent, Mac treats his charges at the pet shelter horribly.
- Adventures in Comaland: Peanut after he received serious head trauma fighting one of the PFC Rottweilers. It takes the effort of booth Tarot, Sabrina and Pete to get him out of there. Learning the true horrors of the Whiteman mansion in the process and that the worst was yet to come.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: Booth Squeak and Spo are shown to have had ties with the Mice Revolutionary Committee
- Alternate Universe: Apparently so, though the author tried to fit in as much canon material as possible. Even the first special episode has Peanut and King from canon warped into the universe of this fic. Then there is Episode 16 of Season 2. And recently, the third special in which both universes are fanon.
- Always Identical Twins: Antares and Aldebaran Foster. Louise and Nutella Sandwich. Rigel and Naos Foster provide example of half-identical brother and sister
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: For example, you have normally-colored Peanut alongside Grape, a purple cat.
- Elpis is a green Terrier. Yup
- Backstory: The fic takes advantage of the fact that the comic mostly lacked these at the time of publishing. And isnt afraid to provide its own takes on how these characters ended up in Babylon Gardens.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- Peanut. Full stop. Even Bino eventually pushes him to his breaking point.
- Simon whenever he is dealing with an animal abuser.
- Big Brother Worship: Fino is the oldest of the litter composed by Fido, Bino and Joey. They adore him to the point that even Bino melts in his presence.
- Big Eater:
- Believe it or not, Sasha. (Justified; she was pregnant at the time.)
- For canon, it's Tiger. For fanon, Elliot.
- Bloodier and Gorier. The fic has quite a few fight scenes and doesn't pull any punches when it comes to describing the violence taking place during them. Simon as an example kills one of the PFC Rottweilers by crushing its trachea from the Inside right before it bit his arm off. This in stark contrast to the main comic which used Amusing Injuries on the rare time such things happened.
- Broken Bird: Grape has abandonment issues that her friends tried hard to console her from. Tarot is revealed to be this as well. Volant is a male example. Even Bino is revealed to have a bit of this.
- Butt-Monkey: To say Alcor's situation is less than stellar following the birth of Naos and Ringel is an understatement.
- Chirping Crickets: When, during a party, Peanut publicly asks Grape to marry him, thus causing instant mass silence.
- Cooldown Hug: Peanut does this alongside a kiss to Grape in order to stop her from trying to eviscerate Joey during one of her "Inner Tiger" episodes (brought forward by the later revealing that not only did he know of their Secret Relationship. He was the Secret Secret-Keeper for a half-dozen or so others too). He tries it again when she flares up during their second trip to Uncle Reuben's farm, but with disastrous results as she was also suffering from a traumatic flashback to her childhood at the time.
- Contrived Coincidence: According to The Rick, the blue-eyed wolf cub’s unofficial name is Darth Vader Sanchez. In this fic, it’s Lightsaber and she’s a girl who tends to choose a boy’s name. Whether or not this is a
Fandom Nod has yet to be indicated. - Cut Short: The fic is no longer updated, due to Valerio's rather hectic personal life and it doesn't appear to be continuing any soon.
- Cure Your Gays: Flash' parents attempt this, and fail.
- Darker and Edgier: Oh yes. The idea of a world where animals are sentient but threated the same way as real life animals are explored in painfully realistic detail in ways the main comic didn't.
- The old Babylon Gardens Animal Shelter is notable depicted as an extreme Orphanage of Fear where animals are locked in tiny cages, barely allowed to interact with one another, feed the worst food possibly and by law no less, had to be euthanized if they weren't adopted within a certain time.
- A big plot line in season 1 is how the old Whiteman mansion used to host illegal Pet Fight Clubs. Literal Beastly Bloodsports where pets through extreme mental an physical torture would be turned into so called "Killer Whales" where their only purpose in life was to kill or be killed. The fic is also quick to mention that these are actually quite common and still around in some places.
- Disappeared Dad:
- Budweiser. He allowed his career as a K-9 officer to break up his family. He wouldn't allow the same to happen to his son Peanut.
- Mod was Spo's grandfather. He is back as a ghost.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Budweiser. Former instructor at the K-9 academy, he gave his own son, Peanut, quite a hard time.
- Temno and Natalie Domina: Black wolf, Captain of the Special Security Forces at Xanadu, and his human partner. Wishing them a good night is a sure way to spend a night of sufferance!
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Being created right as Rick Griffin himself was starting to flesh out the Housepets! lore meant Valerio Pastore interpretation would often clash with the way things would be explained in the actual comic.
- Squeak is described as being drawn to Dogs thanks to some very nasty experiences with her own species, rather than "Big Paws" just being her fetish. She and Joel is also established to not actually be dating as said dogs heart lies with Cats.
- Tarot is initially depicted as being something of a morally questionable character with a strong hint of Utopia Justifies the Means. She is also described as Sabrinas pupil rather than the reverse. And as Spirit Dragon hadn't been introduced yet booth are depicted as working for a vaguely defined "Order of Mystics". Season 2 would end up retconning most of this.
- The Milton ferrets are mostly delegated to background characters. Their roles and work to improve pet life instead taken up by Martin Foster.
- PETA is a major villain in the fic while the main comic quickly dropped them after they were introduced.
- Easily Forgiven: Peanut called out on Spirit Dragon for manipulating Tarot into escaping to another dimension when the problems could’ve been solved with the help of her friends. After SD was penalized into breaking contract with Tarot, Peanut insisted angrily that the former is not needed anymore. About fourteen episodes later, SD helped Peanut and Grape on another miracle and the dog, being who he is, actually thank her and said she’s still the coolest.
- Elaborate Underground Base:
- Xanadu is a facility where Gottschalk creates the coolest, most futuristic stuff, military and civilian.
- The Kingpin is an underground replica of Terrace High, and it is intended as a luxury emergency shelter
- Everybody Knew Already: Most Babylon Garden dogs either knew or at least highly suspected that Fido and Sabrina were an item long before they came out with it. Unlike Peanut he had after all no excuse for why her scent was often all over him.
- Everything Makes a Mushroom: Every morning, Antares and Aldebaran wake up their Dad in a most funny/destructive fashion.
- During a snowball fight at Terrace High, a particularly immense snowball created a mushroom cloud of snow.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: All of the PFC Rottweilers. One has its Trachea crushed from the inside by Martin, the female is shot multiple times by Janet Masterson and Earl Sandwich after Grape clawed one of its eyes out and the third is violently electrocuted by Antares
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted (and thus averted) immediately with the introduction of Mizar and Alcor.
- Flatline: Averted. When Peanut wakes up from a week-long coma after his run-in with one of the PFC Rottweilers, Grape hugs him so passionately she snaps off his ECG leads, giving his doctors a scare.
- Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: In rare occasion, dogs and cats can walk on all fours which they consider primitive. Grape spent episodes as a quadruped to save herself the back pains from being pregnant with five kittens.
- Freak Out: Zachary, after his tragic experience, spends some time in isolation ward in the company of his lucid nightmares.
- Gender Equals Breed:
- Generation Xerox: Dayshaun looks exactly like Peanut, except he's a cat.note A spoiler picture revealed King and Bailey's pups will match their fur color, too.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: Sgt. Ralph quickly befriends Alcor and Mizar after giving them pups, Joey and Blanch are also WAY too excited when Max volunteers to donate. Averted and Subverted with Alcor, who chickens out of donating for Sabrina and Fido and him doing it for Grape and Peanut is just a cover story.
- Good Shepherd:
- Saint Anthony Abbot, protector of animals, is known to have founded an order dedicated to the non-human creatures. After being persecuted in Europe during the XIV century's Great Plague, the order moved to the Americas.
- Brother Lazarus, a cat who survived multiple attempts to suppress him at a shelter, was ordered as priest by the Order, though Rome doesn't still recognize this authority.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Grape has a tendency towards fits of violent rage (referred to as her "Inner Tiger") whenever she is sufficiently annoyed. While sometimes Played for Laughs it certainly wasn't during their return to uncle Reubens farm when she accidently Clawed Peanut's face during an episode.
- Following this she makes a promise to never let her emotions get the better of her again. And while Nevermore was very close to trigger another one just a few minutes later, she managed with great effort to suppress it.
- Happily Married:
- Peanut and Grape's marriage was the first in this fiction. They started a new social trend!
- Followed by Alcor/Mizar, Bino/Sasha and like in canon, King/Bailey
- Heroic BSoD: An example is when the barn cats flirted with Peanut. Or when Tegan steals a kiss from the dog, short-circuiting him.
- Heroic Dog: The Lucky Charm Grove has guard teams of humans and military dogs.
- Police dogs watch over Terrace High
- Military dogs are employed to look over the FNERL and Xanadu
- Laika was actually the first USSR cosmonaut and she returned alive from her mission of orbiting Earth three times. She became a hero and left her pawprint in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Peanut almost loses his life and spends a week in coma in order to defend his dad from one of the PFC Rottweilers.
- Even Zachary, of all pets, risks his life to check on the kits of the raccoons who adored him.
- Martin Foster's Self-Sacrifice Scheme allows him to save Babylon Gardens from one of the vicious dogs, but he loses his arm in the process. Averted when the surgeons reattach it successfully.
- Later on, that same one Martin killed reappears as a ghost, and sacrifices itself to help Martin.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Volant grew his head fur to cover his left eye which was redden by acid being poured on by his abusive owners.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Raimund Radulph Gottschalk. While richer than the Milton Ferrets, he will go as far as possible if this will help him reach social equality between animals and humans.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Taken to the extreme with Saga, a mouse who’s as short, if not, shorter than Spo, who hitch a ride on Samson, a Saint Bernard who tower over even the Foster twin. Of course, for the romantic example, Tegan and Samson were this as well.
- I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!:
- To pets, orange soda acts like alcohol.
- To dogs, anise works like strong drinks for humans, while catnip acts like cannabis for cats.
- Identical Grandson: Rufus’s granddaughter, Joline. Bud even look like an older version of his son. And don’t get started on Dayshaun.
- Interspecies Romance: Explored in detail, especially early on. Specifically, we have Peanut and Grape, as well as OCs Alcor (male cat) and Mizar (female dog). Fido and Sabrina from the canon remain a couple as well, though Joey and Squeak's relationship comes to an end. Later, Joey started dating and eventually married one of the Bigglesworth Cats.
- Just in Time: At the last minute before the bomb inside the Foster mansion was triggered, Kevin Marsh managed to defuse the transmitter with a sniper rifle. Averted with Episode 16 of Season 2 where the heroes had 24 hours to rescue Tarot and spared several hours left upon succeeding.
- Kick the Dog:
- Thomas and Celia Milton abandoned Volant when he was a puppy.
- Grape was abandoned by her owners, and years later they came back to take her away in order to squeeze money from her co-tutor, Martin.
- Killed Off for Real:
- Silver and Zen, the raccoons who originally worshipped Zach. This is when it gets dark for the first time in this fic.
- Rufus, the dog of Peanut and Grape's Uncle Reuben, dies of old age early on.
- LEGO Genetics/Patchwork Kids: Peanut and Grape's eventual children. As a gift from Tarot and Spirit Dragon.
- Luxury Prison Suite: The Lucky Charm Grove for the Abandoned and the Ferals is THE shelter where any stray would willingly spend the rest of his/her life. Martin made sure that all guests are treated at the finest even should they not find a new family. Heck, they can even be PICKY with the people coming to visit them! The place has also school, laboratories, theater...
- Midnight Snack: One of the few instances where this trope is not Played for Laughs. Grape mentions that she tends to indulge in these but not because she is hungry. Having spent most her childhood without a home and pretty much constantly starving she instead sometimes get urges to take unguarded food simply because its there.
- Mood Whiplash: Emotions can get yanked every which way like a rag doll at times. For the first time in the middle of Season 1.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking:
- Mizar gets a strong desire to have a puppy of her own after holding one.
- Tegan has developed a strong attraction to Grape's kittens and will gladly spend all time she can with them.
- Blanche (a dog lover who married Joey and one of the the Bigglesworths) also dropped strong hints that she wanted kittens.
- NoSocialSkills: Averted. King finally decides to sniff butt in public to show he's a social dog after all.
- O.C. Stand-in: The actor dog who is stated to be nobody in particular is none other than Elliot Bannister. Allegra, the cat waitress, is a minor example. Delusional Steve became this, recently.
- Oh, Crap!: The faces that T.J., Tsuki and Zane do at the sight of an incoming humongous snowball christened Gamilon Planet Bomb
- Old Friend: Felix and Lucky, Grape's old kittenhood friends. They too were abandoned before they came to live to Babylon Gardens as well.
- One-Steve Limit: Defied when Grape names one of her kittens Tarot.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Several times, ghosts of animals have had an important role in this fiction.
- Joel's and Martin's pets were furious for being mistreated in life and wanted Martin back with them, to the point of drawing him to their realm
- Martin's house in Babylon Gardens proved to be an actual haunted house, where its former owners used to hold a bloody pet fight business. At a point, its restless spirits started seeking revenge.
- Morrigan is the affectionated guardian ghost of Elizabeth Rozen
- Parents as People: Alcor gets fed up frequently with Naos' antics.
- Pet Heirs: Averted. The six ferrets who inherited the Late Henry Milton's fortunes have lost everything to Thomas and Celia Milton and now live at the wolves' house.
- Plausible Deniability: As weird as things sometimes get in Babylon Gardens, it would be hard for people to accept that Peanut and Grape actually produced offspring together. So their cover story is that Alcor is the father. Their children were made as kittens, and one even has almost all white fur.
- Posthumous Character: Karl-Lenin Faust was eaten by Grape before the start of the fic. He is still an important character to Squek's backstory though as he is revealed to have been the brother of the revolutions current leader Joseph-Boris Trotsky who she used to date. But left after he essentially pulled a coup by sending his brother to die so he could be turned into a martyr for their cause.
- Secret Secret-Keeper:
- Joey knew all along that Grape and Peanut (alongside a whole bunch of other cats and dogs) were a couple. Mainly thanks to Squeak having extensive contacts within the mouse community and its spy network. He never told anyone though until the former two came out.
- Bino of all dogs unintentionally became this after he learned about Grape's and Peanut's relationship from having spied on the later. He was saving the potential blackmail for something good though and them coming out meant he never had the chance. He also knew about Fido's and Sabrina's relationship but never revealed it out of respect for his brother.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: A real hydrogen bomb, hidden in Xanadu, ready to go off in case of an emergency that cannot be solved with any other means.
- Self-Insert Fic: Grape writes one of these and is incredibly embarrassed when Peanut reads it. But it is later revealed that she was writing it as a Christmas Gift for Peanut.
- Show Within a Show: Pridelands, a fictional work of which Peanut, Grape and mainly the pet cats are very fond.
- Doc & Smith, a TV show featuring a sleuth cat and dog duo.
- The Song of the Forest a tale featuring a wolf befriending a female dog named Daisy.
- Spirit Advisor:
- Peanut is snapped out of a depression after a fight with Grape by Rufus. He realizes at the end it was Rufus's ghost. The old dog had just died.
- Mod was the friend of puppy Bino, before ending up as cat snack. Today, he is the spiritual advisor of Bosco, son of Bino.
- Squick: Bino, Fido and Fox's in-universe reaction when they learn that King is actually Joel, a former member human turned into a dog by Pete. What makes it especially off-putting is the fact that King's girlfriend Bailey is pregnant with his puppies.
- StockAnimalName: Averted. The Bigglesworth cats names have been revealed. Joey's wife is called Blanche.
- Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Martin and Gottschalk are not the bad guys, but they protect their premises and business with the best Big Brother network money can buy. It is said that Martin's employees
must accept cameras in the restrooms as well. - The Bully: Fredd, Diego and Armando. Three junkyard dogs who used to give Max a very hard time and still conspire to make him suffer.
- The Cameo: Characters from the fancomic ''Housepets!1X'', and from the webcomic ''Newshounds'' appeared repeatedly during this fiction.
- Tranquil Fury: Martin is known for this. You do not want to mess with him.
- Uncle Pennybags: Martin has turned his lottery win in an animal welfare business, AND he co-adopted Peanut and Grape, AND hired their owners at a ludacrious wage.
- Vague Age: Although The Rick stated the dog and cat’s lifespan are twice that of real-life counterparts, one of his short stories retconned this to an average of 40 human years. In this fic, it’s hard to determine especially for ones who are between 5 and 20. One example is Pawdrick who is 16 years old and T.J. is stated to be about the same age as him, which means the same for his twin sister Daisy. Same thing applies to Tegan and Elliot who are 15 which is about a decade older than Peanut and Grape.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Tarot's/Spirit dragon's eventual reaction to Peanut growing ever closer to Grape though they had to work hard to get there. Cemented when she pulled some cosmic strings so that They could have children together booth as an example of this trope as well as a Take That! towards Pete who kept teasing and encouraging them to go between Peanut and Grape.
- Xanatos Gambit: Bino encouraged Peanut to join the Academy with him with the notion that if the latter became a good cop, he’ll owe the former big time thus improving his reputation and if not, it will be proof that cat lovers are too soft. Of course, this is not without challenge when Grape found out about it.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Tiger gained his deserved self-esteem from the beginning and things mostly end well for him…that is, until he learned that his love for Celestia was not meant to be thus reverting him back to his old self. He’s still working out though, albeit excessively.
