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A popular Flash series, featured prominently on Newgrounds, Brackenwood tells the odd story of Bitey, a mysterious creature known as a Dashkin. Living in a forest, Bitey fills his day with picking on other creatures, which has a tendency to come back to haunt him. Other creatures inhabit this strange land, like slow-witted elf-creature BingBong, Lemonee Wee the witch, and the easily angered Sasquatch-like Morrugs.

In 2016 it has gotten a spin-off series called "Brackenwood Wild Documentary." Its purpose is to teach us about the wildlife in the series.

Created by Adam Phillips, AKA Chluaid, a former Disney animator, the series is famous for its absolutely beautiful artwork, which means new episodes of the series usually take a long while to come out. Also featured on Phillips' own Web site.

Adam Phillips also has a Patreon account, which you can find here.


This work provides examples of:

  • Achievements in Ignorance: Bingbong manages to outlast a group of fairies at their own dance — a dance which was supposed to exhaust and kill whoever dared to join their fun.
  • All There in the Manual: The information about YuYus was told in the Phillips' own website, revealing that they are actually a malevolent race of shadowy creatures that comes from parallel world and are known to forcibly take people into their dimension and turn them into their slaves.
  • Arboreal Abode: Bitey lives inside a hollow tree, in pretty primitive lodgings. The witch Lemony Wee lives in a somewhat more urbane pink tower on top of a tree.
  • Armless Biped: The Prowlies only have one set of limbs, which serve as both their arms and legs.
  • Art Evolution: Compare "Bitey of Brackenwood" to the later shorts, and the evolution is very clear. And very pretty to look at.
  • Aside Glance: In "Littlefoot", the spider gives a sardonic glance at the audience after Bitey freaks out when a leaf falls on him.
  • Baby Planet: Brackenwood itself is a small world almost entirely covered with forest. It's not as small as most examples — you can't see its curvature from the surface, at least — but it's small enough for Bitey to circumnavigate it in (presumably) a few minutes of running and for individual mountains to visibly stick out from orbit.
  • Balloon Belly: This happens to Bitey after eating a basket of waterlollies, only to find that they expand upon any kind of impact. It results in him becoming more vulnerable with every sudden movement he makes to all the other creatures he's bullied over the course of the series, until finally, at the end, he regurgitates them when they take their revenge.
  • Berserker Rage: After having his path blocked several times by Bitey, the baby Morrug twitches, his eyes turn green, and he goes feral attack mode on Bitey, ripping out a few tufts of hair in his rage.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: The baby Morrug is cute and harmless-looking, and when Bitey starts to advance towards him he simply flees. But when Bitey keeps blocking his path and won't let him escape, he flips, goes into a Berserker Rage, and thoroughly thrashes Bitey.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Morrugs resemble bigfoots with solid green eyes and mouths filled with sharp teeth but normally completely obscured by their thick orange, reddish or purple hair. They're normally placid beings who care for the wildlife of Brackenwood, but wanton cruelty can easily send them into violent rages. They lose their fur as they age; the Auld Sage is completely bald.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The YuYu speak a Conlang called Sarus, which is based on Solresol. Said language can also be rendered through colours, patterns of movement, or musical notes, so messages in Sarus appear throughout the series for the eagle-eyed viewer to pick out.
  • Brought Down to Normal: During the episode "Waterlollies", Bitey eats the titular objects, gaining a Balloon Belly and losing his famous speed, a fact several angry creatures have been awaiting.
  • Chase Scene: A frequent element in the Brackenwood series. Either Bitey's chasing after someone, or they're chasing after him.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Bitey is the last surviving Dashkin after his kind was wiped out by an unknown catastrophe when he was just a child. He was later raised by a Morrug couple, until they had a child of their own and abandoned him to fend for himself in the wild as one of the only thinking beings in a world of animals.
  • Dark Is Evil: The YuYu are a very nasty group of creatures resembling a writing, living shadow. They are a magical species similar to fairies that come from the parallel world, and they are known to kidnap people and take them to their dark netherworld, turning them into their slaves and abusing them on regular basis.
  • Enchanted Forest: A deep, trackless forest covers the entirety of the Baby Planet of Brackenwood, and is home to many strange, magical beings.
  • Eye Scream: In "Prowlies at the River", when a small woodpecker lizard drills a hole in Bitey's tree with its chisel-like snout, Bitey looks through the hole to figure out what's going on... at which point the lizard jabs him straight in the eye.
  • The Fair Folk:
    • The YuYu, tiny goblin-like beings who come out at night to steal people away to a dark netherworld, and can fuse with each other into a cloud of black smoke.
    • "Bingbong of Brackenwood" features another group of similar beings, perhaps an early "draft" of the YuYu or perhaps something different. They resemble tiny featureless humanoids that glow a soft yellow like a candle, and with flames for hair. Bingbong finds them in a clearing, dancing in a circle while others play pipes and drums. He runs in to join them, at which point the humanoids look at each other, nod, and begin to dance faster and faster around Bingbong as their yellow glow turns orange, then red... until Bingbong looks down to find them all lying dazed on the ground, at which point he loses interest and wanders away.
  • Fauns and Satyrs: Bitey looks like a faun with a face and head completely covered by thick brown hair.
  • Fragile Speedster: Bitey relies on his speed to wreak havoc, but isn't especially strong or capable in a fight. When he gets caught, he doesn't really pose a threat unless he can get free.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the scene in "The YuYu" where a running Bitey swallows a firefly, if you stop the video at just the right moment, you get a very brief glimpse of the firefly's terrified face.
  • Friendless Background: Bitey, due to having grown up as a lone sapient mind in a world on animals, has never had any peers, friends or mentors and has gone through life alone.
  • Gentle Giant: When Bitey isn't messing with them, the Morrugs are peaceful keepers of the forest.
  • Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Auld Sage is apparantly a very old Morrug. Minus the fur they're typically covered in.
  • Harmful to Minors: Bitey being exposed to the annihilation of his race as a child, though he barely remembers it.
  • Hidden Depths: Bitey is revealed to be More than Meets the Eye in "Last of the Dashkin".
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: Behind Bitey's jerkass exterior lies a bitter loneliness of being the last of his kin.
  • Jerkass: Growing up alone in the forest has turned Bitey into a bitter, rather cruel creature, always going out of his way to ruin someone's day. "Last of the Dashkin" explains that being an intelligent and emotional creature, alone in a world of simple animals, did a number on Bitey's psyche.
  • Kick the Dog: Bitey typically amuses himself by picking on and tormenting small, helpless creatures.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Bitey rarely escapes an episode without being given some form of physical payback or humiliation as a direct result of his cruelty towards others.
    • He gets a good toss after beating up a Fatsack in his debut episode.
    • After picking on a group of Prowlies, Bitey takes a drink from the stream... in which BingBong just urinated.
    • Bitey gets whacked with a rock by the baby Morrug he was bullying in "Littlefoot".
    • After his daily ritual of being a jerkass to the rest of the creatures, Bitey has extremely bad karma when he ends up in the middle of some of the creatures that he's bullied through the series in "Waterlollies"; however, the karma doesn't hit Bitey until he is forced to regurgitate all the waterlollies that he eats at the end of the episode.
  • Last of His Kind: Bitey is the last surviving Dashkin. Growing up alone has turned his personality into what it is today.
  • Living Mood Ring:
    • A bird seen in "Prowlies at the River" is blue when it first appears, but turns red when angered by Bitey barreling past it.
    • The Morrugs' eyes are normally red, but turn green when they become angry.
  • Living Shadow: The mysterious YuYu join together into one of these, which they use to drag a victim off to a briefly seen shadow world.
  • Making a Splash:
    • After destroying her flower pots, Lemonee Wee summons a seemingly endless tidal wave, dragging Bitey off, right into an angry Morrug's hands.
    • The wizard-like creature (a redesigned Lemonee Wee) that appears in the end of "Last of the Dashkin" has water abilities as well.
  • Mama Bear: Don't pick on the baby Morrug. Chances are his big angry mama isn't too far away.
  • Meaningful Name: Bitey is a super fast creature known as a Dashkin.
  • Monochromatic Eyes: Bitey's eyes are solid white, while the Morrugs' are solid red.
  • Mood Whiplash: "Last of the Dashkin" differs from the previous episodes focused on mischievous humor and Laser-Guided Karma; it ventures into Bitey's surprisingly deep past and explains why he acts the way he does today in a more somber telling.
  • Narrator: "Last of the Dashkin" breaks from the usual episode style, offering a narrator to explain Bitey's history, and why he acts the way he does.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • When Bitey realises that in his efforts to run from the YuYu he's circumnavigated the entire planet and run straight back into them from the other side.
    • When, helpless due to eating Waterlollies, he realizes that he's surrounded by the creatures he tormented throughout the series.
  • Parental Abandonment: After the event that wiped out the other Dashkin, Bitey was taken in by the Morrugs, but they abandoned him when they had a child of their own. It's heavily implied that this is what caused Bitey to become such a cruel and hateful person.
  • Raised by Wolves: Bitey was briefly raised by a Morrug couple, until they had a biological child and abandoned him.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Inverted; the Morrugs normally have red eyes. When those eyes turn green, that means you've officially pissed them off.
  • The Resenter: Bitey is envious of the other creatures in the forest because they have their own kin, while Bitey, being the Last of His Kind, has no one.
  • Retcon: Lemonee Wee used to be a standard-issue Halloween witch with a big warty nose who stood about two feet tall. Philips decided that this didn't really mesh with an alien fantasy world like Brackenwood, and she reappears at the end of "Last of the Dashkin" looking more like a catlike wizard or shaman.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter:
    • The baby Morrug is a big fluffy ball of cute. But he still has the Morrug temperament.
    • Baby Bitey is depicted as a small, chubby faun with a round head of fluffy fur.
    • Fatsacks are small, chubby, droopy-nosed creatures whose awkward movements serve to make them more endearing.
  • Scary Stinging Swarm: The tiny white specks seen flying around the Brackenwood forests are harmless when alone, but when Bitey steals their hive a large swarm gathers together to chase him and pursues him relentlessly. After it catches up to him, Bitey only manages to escape the stinging cloud by diving into a river.
  • Scenery Porn: Phillips isn't afraid to flaunt that Disney pedigree, as evidenced by the beautiful artwork of the forest setting.
  • Serial Escalation: During the episode "The YuYu", Bitey cranks his already superhuman speed up to eleven by running around the entire planet in less than a minute.
  • Silent Snarker: It's extremely brief, but just after the Oh, Crap! moment described above Bitey wears a hilarious expression of "God dammit."
  • Single-Biome Planet: Bitey's entire planet appears to be a forest with some mountains and grassy patches. Hand Waved with the claim that it's considerably smaller than Earth, and thus the various factors that give Earth more than one biome aren't in play as much.
  • Solitary Sorceress: Lemony Wee the witch may well be the only human on the planet, though she spends a lot of her time with the Auld Sage.
  • Speculative Documentary: The "Brackenwood Wildlife Documentary Series" shorts describe the nature and habits of the fictional creatures of the setting, such as Fatsacks and Prowlies.
  • Spiders Are Scary: Bitey really doesn't like spiders, although it seems to be as much disgust as outright fear.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: A variant. The insect swarm in "Waterlollies" purses Bitey relentlessly when he steals their hive, and keeps roaming the forest in a single-minded attempt to find him long after he discards the emptied nest and, thus, after their attack will have any practical benefit for them.
  • To Be Continued: "Last of the Dashkin" ends with a a redesigned Lemonee Wee appearing in front of Bitey, cutting just as she confronts him.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Bitey, before he suffered from parental abandonment issues and loneliness.
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The YuYu are much scarier villains than you would expect from a Disney-inspired fantasy series like this. It helps that they're currently the only real villains in the series (unless you consider Bitey a Villain Protagonist).
  • The Voiceless: Everyone, with the exception of the Auld Sage and possibly Lemonee Wee. Bitey can talk, he just doesn't have a lot to say when Brackenwood appears to have a grand total of three truly sentient creatures, himself included.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Bitey is afraid of spiders, as shown in "Littlefoot" and "Waterlollies".
  • Wild Child: Bitey. He's the last Dashkin left after a disaster wiped out the rest when he was a child, and was briefly raised by Morrugs. It's implied he's the only sapient being on Brackenwood besides Lemonee Wee and the Auld Sage, and that this isolation is why he's such a cruel and vicious being.

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