Main Index | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Water of The Womb | Blood of the Covenant | Heat of the Heart | Closet of Colours | Knots of Nature | Spirits Moving Musically | Pieces Of The Past |Hana Mo Naki | Antagonists | Holiday Specials
Multiple stories
- Central Theme: The theme of this collection is history and culture.
The Peaches of Immortality - Jiǔqiān (Monkie Kid), Liùqiān (Mei), and Sānqiān (Red Son)
- Alcoholic Parent: Dramatic example. Sun Wukong, MK's bio father, was addicted to peach baijiu and drugged baby MK to sleep with it.
- All Muslims Are Arab: Averted. Red Son is now Buddhist, but ta de parents are still Muslim, and the family are Uyghur Chinese.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Mei was kidnapped to be forcibly married, but managed to escape.
- Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Apparently this is typical of the products at the Demon Bull family's food truck. It's noted in "Difficult Conversations" that the lowest level on their spice scale is "very hot".
- Cop Hater: Red Son makes it a point not to associate with law enforcement due to ta de father Demon Bull King having been sent to a harsh detention centre in China.
- Domestic Abuse: Macaque was violent to Wukong and left all the responsibility for baby MK to him.
- Harmful to Minors: MK was present while Macaque abused Wukong when MK was an infant, then witnessed Ratigan assault Tang when MK was only three years old.
- Insistent Terminology: Red Son uses the Mandarin pronouns ta/ta de because "English pronouns are fucking pedestrian!"
- Not Hyperbole: Red Son was unsure how to tell ta de parents about coming to the Palace, then clarified this is because of there's a Language Barrier between them due to ta de parents not speaking Mandarin.
- Ominous Mundanity: A "vocational center" in the context it's used here is not a school; it refers to the Xinjiang internment camps
, which are set up to brainwash and kill Uyghur people and other Chinese Muslims. - On One Condition: Red Son's condition for new hires at the food truck is to eat the hottest item on the menu to prove they can handle being in an enclosed space with strong spices all day.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Mei says her family is the wealthiest in Qinghai, but since there aren't that many people living there, that doesn't really mean much.
- Population Control: The One Child Policy in China led to gendercide because of the preference for boys, leading to girls like Mei being kidnapped for men who want wives, since there aren't enough women to go around.
- The Rival: The Demon Bull family run a food truck which competes with Oegwipali and Mulmangcho's restaurant, and Red Son suggests ta might hire Jasper just because the competition hate her because Lapis works for them.
- Skewed Priorities: Red Son has more issue with Jasper being a cop than a sex offender and still offers her a job because ta wants to make the competition mad. The reason ta doesn't hire her? She can't handle the hottest item on the menu.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Red Son was tricked and forced into eating non-halal food when a government officer tried to convert him and his mother.
- Wanted a Son Instead: Mei's parents didn't care, but it led to her problem; China favours male children so much there's a shortage of marriageable women, so she was kidnapped to be sold as a bride.
Comrade Permafrost (Peaches)
- Adaptational Name Change: Peaches is just a nickname here, with her real name being Anar, which means "pomegranate".
- Angsty Surviving Twin: Very, very briefly.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The herd all dearly love each other, but they're quite the cultural mishmash and all traumatised to various levels, which left Peaches something of an emotional mess herself.
- Blaming the Victim: Referenced; as a teen, Peaches mentioned that one of her friends' mom blamed Ember McLain's clothing choices for her being assaulted. Manny wasn't happy.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Fast Tony killed and ate Stu during an escape attempt, Crash and Eddie are implied to have been cut up and sold as food along with the animal carcasses, and Ellie was hungry enough to eat her own miscarried foetus.
- Infectious Insanity: Nothing bad ever happened to Peaches directly, but being raised by an assortment of people who were all horribly traumatised left its marks.
- The Lost Lenore: Buck's pineapple wife was an actual person in this world, who died in Karlag, and Bronwyn the pumpkin is implied to have been their actual baby.
- Post-Historical Trauma: She suffers generational trauma from her extended family having all been tortured in Karlag.
- Race Lift: Technically in canon the animals don't have human races, but culturally are similar to contemporary Americans. Here, Manny was a German Jew, his dead first wife was a Volga Tatar and so were Roshan and his family, Crash and Eddie were Kazakh, Ellie was Kalmyk, Shira was a Crimean Mountain Jew, Sid was Soviet Korean, Momma Rex was Manchurian Japanese, and Buck had a Mongolian surname (Bayarsaikhan), while the rest were native Russians.
- Related in the Adaptation: She's Alice Fefferman's mother.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: Ellie ate her own miscarriage, Tony killed and ate Stu, and Scrat died from eating untreated acorns.
- Trauma Button: Once they're safe, none of the herd ever eat meat again, and they became so paranoid about the cold that they kept the heaters blazing constantly and sent Peaches out in several layers even in summer, because those things remind them of Karlag.
Meimei (Ai) and Jiejie
- Adaptational Name Change: Jiejie's name is Jargalyn here.
- Alternative Calendar: Being from Mongolia, Jiejie measures her age in months rather than years, saying she was one hundred and seventy-seven when she was caught rather than fourteen.
- Breeding Slave: Jiejie was captured from Mongolia and brought to China to produce a baby for an infertile couple.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: The couple that kidnapped Jiejie only allow her to keep in contact with her daughter if she treats her like a sister, allowing the couple to treat Ai like their daughter.
- Population Control: Siblings in China are quite rare due to the One Child Policy, so Ai and Jiejie aren't actually sisters here.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: Ai is Jiejie's daughter instead of her sister, but Jiejie calls her a sister in public as a Mythology Gag.
- Wanted a Son Instead: Mentioned, but averted. Families in China tend to favour having boys, but the couple who abducted Jiejie just wanted any baby.
Ikamba ya Rwanda - Umusambi (Irwin) and Intare (Max)
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Max's sections have turquoise text.
- Determined Doctor: Irwin is a medical doctor who works out in the rural areas of Africa in difficult conditions.
- Honor Thy Abuser: Irwin provided medical treatment to Hutu people who had been involved in the Tutsi genocide which targeted him and killed most of his family.
- Pitiful Worms: The Interahamwe that captured Max and took him to their camp called him "inyenzi", which means cockroach, while they assaulted him.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Max's godfather told Irwin that Max was dead, which Irwin believed until they both went back to Nyanza.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Irwin is calm, collected and unfailingly forgiving. Max is a lot more bitter and resentful. Their traumas also parallel each other with Irwin receiving help and protection from various people and Max being routinely let down and victimized.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Irwin is a devout Christian and strongly believes in this principle. Max, who was directly harmed more severely by the Interahamwe, doesn't, and considers Irwin a traitor.
Estrellas del Dia - Morningstar (Dulcinea) and Eveningstar (Kitty Softpaws)
- Age Lift: They're in their seventies now, having grown up in Franco's Spain.
- Book Ends: Their chapter begins and ends with them mentioning the age of consent in their country currently.
- Commonality Connection: They explicitly became friends because they're the only people at the Palace who understand what it was like to grow up in Francoist Spain. The fact they both dated Puss in Boots at one point also helped.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Possibly. Kitty and Dulcinea speculate that Puss killed Francisco Franco, but it's not confirmed.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Kitty's father broke her hands, disowned her, and sent her to an abusive reform school for masturbating when she was twelve, and Dulcinea's husband sent all of her children away because she didn't have time to have sex with him or keep the house perfect with them around.
- Fingore: Kitty's father broke her hands in what's implied to be a stand in for her getting declawed in canon. They didn't heal properly, as evidenced by her fingers being crooked decades later.
- Juvenile Hell: This is effectively what the girls' home Kitty ended up in was, with the girls being forced into manual labour and put through humiliating physical examinations.
- Karmic Jackpot: Dulcinea helps Cleo deliver her baby when the birth begins prematurely. Only a short time later, she's reunited with one of her children, even if it's under poor circumstances (namely, he's Cleo's father).
- Madonna-Whore Complex: The story shows how it's not good to be on either end of the dichotomy. Dulcinea was seen as a pure and perfect girl, which got her forcibly married far too young to a man who sent all six of her children away, and Kitty was disowned, imprisoned, and condemned as a corrupted slut for simply being curious about her own body.
- No Woman's Land: Franco's Spain was pretty terrible for women on every level, and Kitty points out that contemporary Western societies are a lot worse for women than people like to think.
- Self-Abuse: In-universe. Kitty Softpaws was sent to a reformatory because she was caught masturbating.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Dulcinea is a feminine, demure lady who conspired with her lover to kill the dictator of Spain and helps deliver Cleo's premature baby in the middle of the palace all while keeping her wits.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Dulcinea is a traditionally feminine woman who followed all the rules that Franco's Spain set for her. Kitty is foul-mouthed and somewhat masculine and was imprisoned as a child due to her "improper" behavior. Both of their suffering is treated with equal weight and sympathy by the narrative.
Sapta Sagara - Lavanoda (Wesley), Iksurasa (Crispin), Suroda (Cas), Ghrta (Deckard), Ksiroda (Howell), Dadhi (Tim), Jala (Merlin)
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Averted:
Word of God is that Howell is transmasc in canon. - An Arm and a Leg: Tim lost an arm during the destruction of the family's house.
- Big Brother Instinct: Merlin, Westley and Howell are shown to be very protective of their younger siblings.
- Made Out to Be a Jerkass: After Commander Wolf gets mad at Howell for not offering a veteran's discount at his cat cafe and Cas kicks Wolf out for giving him a panic attack, the restaurant gets a bunch of negative comments and reviews claiming that Howell is "ungrateful" and "disrespectful".
- Parental Abandonment: The family don't have enough food to go around, so Howell abandons his baby on a riverbank.
- Promotion to Parent: Wesely and Howell were the oldest two siblings left after their parents died and Merlin and Crispin left home. They raised Tim, Cas and Deckard until the war was over and Merlin took over in their stead.
- Teen Pregnancy: Howell is horrified to find that he's become pregnant as a result of his rape by soldiers. It's too late to do anything about it and he has to go through the birth.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: Howell is caught by the soldiers when he tries to kill one of their horses for food, and he comments about how he was hungry enough to be tempted to dig up and eat their parents.
- War Is Hell: The family's parents are killed, Tim loses an arm, the kids almost die of illness, and Howell is raped by soldiers, while Merlin and Crispin are out of the country and can't contact or help them.
The Weaver's Bonny - Ninety-Nine (Hansel) and Ninety (Gretel)
- Dysfunction Junction: Hansel and Gretel were physically abused by their biological father, with him threating Hansel with a knife to his throat, throttling Gretel, tried to kill them via burning and strangulation. Their parents were both orphaned young and put into the care of pedophiliac single fathers as part of the Kentler Experiment. Their mother picked up HIV from the first one and spread it to all her others, and to Hansel in utero. Mrs Baker their first foster mother forced Hansel into the oven after he missed a space when cleaning, with it turning out her foster father had gotten her pregnant and her having to kill her own child. Their second foster family Mr and Mrs Bauer were abused into showing a lack of emotion and always being forced to smile respectively, leading to their abuse on their kids. Their third foster mother the Tree neglects to feed them anything that isn’t vegetables or fruit, and throws away Hansel’s HIV meds and locks him outside when he goes into withdrawl, having been abused by her alcoholic foster father who made her drink too. Hanzel was sent to stay with Lord Meister, who was only taken in by his foster father to have something to control. Gretel goes to stay with Widow Fischer who married her foster father and never learned how to assimilate into normal life even after he dies. Gretel’s taken in by the Handsome Young Man who after his abuse by his foster father was ignored by his mother, he turned to abusing the younger girls in his care. Hansel goes to stay with the Devil who made Hansel sexually and physically abuse him with a riding crop, to take the abuse that happened to him on himself.
- Happily Adopted: Surprisingly often. Most of their foster homes have at least a few good qualities and some of their placements genuinely love them... but they're still abusive or neglectful or unfit in some way.
- Leit Motif: The Devil's Nine Questions, eight of the nine riddles pertaining to one of the homes they were sent to.
- Parental Favoritism: The Bauers liked Gretel better than Hansel, presumably because she was a girl like they did in canon.
- Trauma Conga Line: The kids go through eight abusive homes between them, and their mother went through several as well.
- Troubled Abuser: The kids are put in a variety of foster homes with parents who are abusive or neglectful. As it turns out, every one of the foster parents suffered through worse foster homes themselves, having been subjects of the infamous Kentler Experiment.
Lóng Xīnláng and Fènghuáng XīnniángFor full list, click here
- Arc Number: The number 9 appears repeatedly.
- Composite Character / Decomposite Character: Most of the reincarnated humans have their incarnations merged into one person (Wang Fugui and Wangquan Fugui being the same person, for example), but Honghong and Susu are mother and daughter instead of powered and de-powered versions of the same person, and the Yuechus are three separate people.
- Deal with the Devil: Honghong is an Ark member here, curiously of the Noble Demon variety. She seeks out inmates likely to get a death sentence and offers to save them if they, or a loved one, give up nine years of their life as a Sex Slave.
- Death Row: One member of each couple ended up with a death sentence for one of the nine crimes that later had their death penalties abolished in Amendment 9.
- Hu Weisheng smuggled stolen wood which turned out to be radioactive, thus "smuggling nuclear materials".
- Wangquan Baye made counterfeit currency.
- Yang Mie was accused of spreading rumours during wartime.
- Wang Fugui smuggled counterfeit currency.
- The Yuyao Princess obstructed the military.
- Tushan Honghong forced people into prostitution.
- Lie Xueyang smuggled items contextually implied to be weapons.
- Yan Ruyu was a pimp.
- Pingqiu Yuechu committed fundraising fraud.
- Driven to Suicide: Dongfang Yuechu kills himself after Honghong is executed.
- Emotional Regression: Both Fugui and Qingtong age-regress due to trauma; she acts like a young child, colouring and playing with dolls, and he acts like an angry teenager, yelling and punching walls.
- Exact Words: Technically Yang Mie isn't rumourmongering...
- False Confession: Technically it's not a confession; Yang Mie tells the truth, in a manner which leads his interrogator to think he's lying.
- Flowery Insults: "YOU SAD SACK OF HOMOSEXUAL COCKROACHES!"
- The Kindness of Strangers: Gladstone Gander calls for help when he finds the brothel in the backroom of the casino and gets everyone freed.
- Lobotomy: The Baiyu Village Ark location lobotomises victims, both to reduce their distress and make it harder for them to escape or fight back.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Yunfei is Uyghur and his family don't want him to marry Xueyang because she isn't.
- Meaningful Name: "Lóng Xīnláng and Fènghuáng Xīnniáng" means "dragon grooms and phoenix brides".
- Not Helping Your Case: Fan Yunfei tries to give gifts to Li Xueyang to help repair their relationship... which include a knife set, a four piece set of crushed iced diamonds, tins of candy with a Chinese pear as the symbol, shoes, a clock, and a handkerchief.
- Paid-for Family: Fugui isn't talking to his father, so he pays Bai Yuechu, Tushan Susu, and various side characters to play the roles of his and Qingtong's family members and act out a traditional proposal for him. Since Susu, playing the matchmaker, is only nine, Yuechu doesn't like Fugui, and no one likes the script he provides, it's rather a mess.
- Race Lift: Cuiyu Minglan is Mosuo, the Yuyao Princess is Hui, Shi Kuan and Fan Yunfei are Uyghur, and the Tushan sisters are part Syrian.
- Shout-Out: While being interrogated, Yang Mie "admits" that there are two thousand three hundred and nine officers coming, and it's noted that he's proud of the "nine".
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Invoked by Yang Mie; he tells the truth in a suspiciously specific way so it sounds like he's lying.
- Unintentionally Notorious Crime: Hu Weisheng unwittingly steals wood from a forest near a nuclear power plant, and is sentenced to death for "smuggling nuclear materials".
- Wife Husbandry: Tushan Honghong bought Dongfang Yuechu from the Ark when he was a child, and they have a daughter together. It doesn't turn out healthy at all; Yuechu turns her in for trafficking, then kills himself when she's executed.
The Powhatan (Pocahontas)
- Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Defied. She does have long hair and a leather jacket, but fragments depict her in accurate traditional formal wear. And the narration is very specific concerning the Powhatan people and the various sub-tribes.
- Decomposite Character: It's made clear that the characters aren't the same people as the historical figures.
- Evil Teacher: Ratcliffe is their history professor in university, and he grades students less on the content of their papers than on whether they're white or not. Averted with her, as it's implied she's a wonderful teacher.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: She's sitting on the steps of the Palace looking at her class's history reports; we get to see snippets of the kids' papers. Also the chapter isn't named after what the narrative refers to her by, but the subject of the history report in question.
- Hates Being Nicknamed: Her given name here is Matty, and she hates it when John calls her "Pocahontas" instead of her real name because it's racist.
- Survivor's Guilt: She's implied to feel extremely guilty over Kocoum (here named Bernard) getting murdered by GWF because he was protecting her.
- Rage Breaking Point: She put up with John calling her "Pocahontas" for a while, but when he did it after Kocoum was murdered, she hit her breaking point and told him to stop seeing her.
The Quantum Chessmen - ♕ (Prince Gumball) and ♛ (vampire Marshall Lee); ♜ (Ice Marcy) and ♖ (Candy Queen); ♝ (Marceline) and ♗ (Princess Bubblegum); ♞ (Star) and ♘ (Bonnie); ♔ (Gary Prince) and ♚ (human Marshall Lee)
- Abortion Fallout Drama: Marceline tries to get an abortion and the doctors perform a full sterilisation op on her instead.
- Baby Factory: Uncle Gumbald allows Bubblegum to be abused and impregnated and sells her babies to rich white couples who want to adopt.
- Boomerang Bigot: Starr has been raised from childhood to see herself as inferior because of her race. She’s also pretty bigoted against natives despite being native herself.
- Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Winter King lets Marcy wear an "Indian princess" costume for Halloween, much to Candy Queen's disgust. Averted when Gumball, Gary, genderbent Neddy, and the Marshalls wear actual traditional regalia - ribbon shirts and jingle dresses.
- But Not Too Black: Winter King tries to replace Marcy's Choctaw and Afro-American cultural connections with his own - notably, he's Nenet (Indigenous Siberian) and not white either. Vampire King is white, and buys Star bleaching cream to make her look whiter.
- Chairman of the Brawl: Bonnie killed Vampire King via beating him with the chair she was tied to.
- Child of Two Worlds: The characters are all separated to some degree from their Native heritage, and several try to reconnect with it.
- Contempt Crossfire: Vampire Marshall mentions that he's discriminated against both by larger society because he's not white and by the Chickasaw community because he's not Chickasaw enough to meet blood quantum requirements. He's tried to register as a tribe member and keeps getting rejected.
- Crippling Castration: Marceline is sterilised against her will.
- Embarrassing First Name: Gumball is named "Bubba", a name he liked when he was younger but eventually grew to be embarrassed by.
- Eye Scream: Vampire King cut out Bonnie's eye with the intention of feeding it to Star.
- Force Feeding: As Star didn't want to eat Bonnie's eye, Vampire King held her nose until she opened her mouth and then forced it down her throat.
- Going Cold Turkey: When Marcy flushes Candy Queen's pills, the side effects of sudden withdrawal include irrational and violent behaviour leading her to assault Winter King.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: The running theme of the chapter is blood quantum laws and how they exclude mixed-race Natives from their own heritage, and the different experiences of mixed Natives depending on whether they're part white or part black (the latter having it worse for obvious reasons). Bubblegum and Neddy have a particularly unfortunate case because their mother was fully Native but had heritage from multiple tribes, so she didn't fit the blood quantum percentage of Seminole specifically for Bubblegum to be registered.
- Harmful to Minors: The 7-year-old Marcy witnesses the drug-withdrawn Candy Queen violently assaulting Winter King.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Winter King drugs Candy Queen to keep her compliant, but withdrawal when Marcy flushes her pills makes her behave irrationally and she violently assaults him, which Marcy unfortunately bares witness to.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Vampire King force-feeds Star human flesh and blood.
- Made a Slave: The five Native tribes represented are the "five civilised tribes", who were called that because they adopted practices from the white settlers, including keeping African slaves. Marshall's mother and Winter King mention that's where Marshall and Marcy's black ancestors came from.
- N-Word Privileges: The authors' notes mention that one of the two Native members of the writing group was the one who wrote this chapter, because of a part calling Natives "red", a term Native people are entitled to reclaim but the white writers aren't. The term is only outright used by a character who is explicitly a racist antagonist, though the choice of canonically bright-pink characters implies the mixing of "red" and "white".
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Pretty much all of the antagonists in this chapter - Scarab commits a hate crime against Gumball and vampire Marshall and calls Gary's sister a retard, Winter King is dismissive of and tries to overwrite Marcy's heritage, the unnamed doctors sterilise Marceline against her will because she's not white, and Vampire King is a Mormon extremist who believes he can and should magically turn his black/Native daughter white by feeding her human flesh.
- The Savage Indian: Discussed in-universe; right-wing news outlets call Candy's withdrawal-fueled attack on Winter King "savagery".
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Marcy is too young to realise why an "Indian princess" Halloween costume is inappropriate and annoys Candy Queen.
- Teen Pregnancy: Gumbald allowed Bubblegum to be impregnated several times when she was a teen, the first time at twelve years old.
- Teens Are Monsters:
- Bubblegum is first raped by a sixteen-year-old boy when she herself is twelve.
- Star's case is made more sympathetic by the abuse Vampire King puts her through, and she seems to change her ways once she’s away from him, but, at least initially, she’s also a horrific bully to Bonnie and a Boomerang Bigot.
- You Are Who You Eat: Obviously, it doesn't actually work, but the Vampire King force-feeds Star the flesh and blood of white and white-passing people in the hopes it will turn her white too.
The Big Five - The Lioness (adult Vitani), the Elephant (Imara), the Rhinoceros (Shabaha), the Leopard (Tazama), and the African Buffalo (Kasi)
See With Pearl And Ruby Glowing The Palace Part One for Vitani's appearance at the Palace.- Abortion Fallout Drama: Zira helped give Kasi an abortion with a sharpened branch, and while she was glad it was done due to not wanting kids, she was in pain for a long time afterwards.
- Adopting the Abused: Timon and Pumbaa took in Vitani and Kovu after Nuka's death.
- Bittersweet Ending: Vitani is dying in her twenties after a life of trauma, but she's helping other women while she has time, is coming to some level of peace about her mother, and looks forward to seeing her brother again.
- Due to the Dead: Vitani scatters Zira's ashes in Kenya where she grew up, as, while she knows Zira wasn't the best mother or person, she still deserved that level of respect.
- Groin Attack: Imara and Kasi had been circumcised, as well as Zira.
- Lady Land: Zira spent some time in Umoja, the all-female refuge village in Kenya, before her marriage to Scar, and Vitani lives there now, supporting abused women.
- Time Skip: Their chapter takes place twenty years after the main story.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The chapter is set in the mid-2030s.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Vitani has cancer and only has about two years to live.
The Abducted Persons - Recovery (Mira) and Repatriation (Sally Bollywood)
- Age Lift: Mira and Sally are really old in the present day where most of the fic is set due to their chapter taking place in 1949.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Mira was forced to marry a Hindu man and Sally a Muslim man.
- Evil Vegetarian: Mira's Hindu husband doesn't consume animal products or let her do so.
- Foreign Queasine: Conversely, Sally is Hindu and distressed by her Muslim husband forcing her to eat meat.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Both sides in the war have both good and horrible people on them - the girls and their families versus the men who forcibly marry them, respectively.
- Hypocrite: Mira's husband is a vegan and makes a speech about nonviolence during their wedding, but has no problem marrying and molesting an eight-year-old kid, or beating her when she couldn't birth him any healthy sons.
- Old Man Marrying a Child: Well, it's not clear how old their husbands are, but they're adults and the girls are respectively eight and twelve at the time.
- Period Piece: The chapter is set in 1949, shortly after Pakistan separated from India.
- Sherlock Scan: Both girls are able to do so, as they're able to deduce each others traumas via this method.
- Teen Pregnancy: Sally was first impregnated at twelve, her first child being born sickly and her second dying just a few hours after being born. Mira was even younger and none of her kids made it at all.
- Unwanted Assistance: The girls are eventually rescued, but the authorities' idea of helping them is to send them off to regions they've never been to before, since now Muslims control Pakistan and Hindus control India and they think the girls should be with people of their own faiths, but the girls actually came from the opposite locations.
Jeonjaeng (Officer Fox) and Peace (Undochi)
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Wolf strongly discouraged Fox from pursuing a career in fashion and was happy when she joined the military, though the shine wears off when she gets court-martialed for refusing to allow a child to be tortured.
- Adaptational Name Change: Officer Fox is named Kit Wolf, her deadname being Lyall.
- Ass Shove: Undochi was given a nutritional enema when he refused to eat in prison.
- Child Soldier: Undochi was a preteen when he joined the North Korean military.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Undochi witnessed Mulmangcho's torture and was tortured himself.
- Harmful to Minors: Being a child soldier is pretty horrifying; Undochi witnessed his brother commit torture and rape, and was tortured himself when he was caught planting bombs.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Officer Fox was court-martialed as official punishment and gang-raped as unofficial punishment for letting Undochi go.
- Parents as People: Officer Fox's dads Wolf and Weasel were decent people but, due to struggling to fit in enough already, did their best to pretend to be straight, which, for a closeted trans woman, didn't help her with her feelings.
- Race Lift: Officer Fox is presented as American in canon and has no specific human ethnicity since she's an anthro fox; here, she's American-raised but was adopted from South Korea.
- Related in the Adaptation: Commander Wolf and Assistant Weasel are Officer Fox's adoptive dads.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Fox feels like one, having served in the army while still presenting as male, since the army's not great for trans people.
- War Is Hell: For both Americans and Koreans, especially for a ten-year-old.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Wolf is horrified to find the prisoner Fox released was a kid and forgives her technical treason immediately.
The Ghost Dance - Homecomer (G1 Spectra Vondergeist), Hitcher (Kiyomi Haunterly), Phantom Rider (Skyra Bouncegait), White Lady (Scarah Screams), Gather-Grim (Dayna Treasura Jones), Poltergeist (Porter Geiss), Haunt (Ari Hauntington), Routewitch (Sirena Von Boo), Reaper (River Styxx), Seizer (Vandala Doubloons), and the Crossroads Ghost (G3 Spectra Vondergeist)
- Adaptational Mundanity: Up to a point. They are all ghosts, but they're the ghosts of humans, not mermaids or centaurs.
- Adaptational Name Change: G1 Spectra Vondergeist is Whispers-Under-Ice, forcibly renamed Vanessa Vandergeest, and her descendant G3 Spectra is Petra. Kiyomi Haunterly, Porter Geiss, and Ari Hauntington keep their first names but Kiyomi's surname is Hattori and Ari's is Huntington, and Porter's Native name is Goosefeather. Skyra Bouncegait is Sky Jumping Horse, Scarah Screams is Sarah McCree, Dayna Treasura Jones is Joanie Day-by-Night, Sirena Von Boo is Serena Blue-Fawn, River Styxx is River Step, and Vandala Doubloons is Angela Two-Moons.
- Boarding School of Horrors: G1 Spectra was held prisoner in a residential school where Native kids were severely abused and trained to act white.
- Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Ari had to dress up in caricatured versions of Native clothes for her vaudeville dancing, and Spectra is annoyed when Operetta wears an "Indian princess" costume for a school contest.
- Burn Baby Burn: Porter was hanged for burning down white people's houses.
- Child of Two Worlds: Kiyomi was Numa and Japanese, but it wasn't much of an issue for her, whereas Scarah was Ute and Irish, and that was; blood quantum rules meant she couldn't be claimed as part of the tribe and she felt left out.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Porter drew on the walls of his cell in blood, semen, and faeces.
- The Dead Can Dance: They discuss how they danced or wanted to dance in life, and the story ends with Spectra leading them in the Ghost Dance.
- Delicate and Sickly: Instead of a mermaid, Sirena was a wheelchair user with bad asthma.
- Due to the Dead: Spectra writes the ghosts' names on ribbons and hangs them up, so they'll be remembered.
- Eye Scream / Facial Horror: Kiyomi lost her nose and eyes to syphilis and River's face was cut up and her eyes gouged out by the white soldiers who murdered her.
- Ghostly Animals: Instead of being a centaur, Skyra was a paraplegic with a strong bond with her horse Sunka, who was killed shortly after her and now manifests along with her.
- Groin Attack: River was killed by a bayonet thrust into her vagina and out through her abdomen.
- The Grotesque: Some of the ghosts look pretty frightening, but they're all friendly.
- I See Dead People: G3 Spectra is alive and can see all the ghosts.
- Interrupted Suicide: Porter's ghost stops Spectra from hanging herself, and Dayna helps her recover from anorexia.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Ari may not have been an actual orphan, as Native kids were often stolen from their families, but either way she was given to white adoptive parents who treated her badly.
- Period Piece: The ghosts' memory fragments are all their stories from various points in Turtle Island history.
- Posthumous Character: All of them except G3 Spectra are dead and have been dead for many years.
- Real-Person Cameo: Several important figures in Turtle Island history appear. Kiyomi danced with Hawthorne Wodziwob, Skyra witnessed the trial of Plenty Horses, Scarah mentions Vine Deloria Jr. during her account of the Alcatraz occupation, Dayna danced with Chief Black Coyote, Ari worked in vaudeville with Zintkala Nuni, and Sirena died of an asthma attack brought on by surprise during Wovoka's solar eclipse ritual.
- Room Full of Crazy: Porter had a psychotic break and drew all over his cell walls in blood.
Tibbar Tibbar (Cam) and Rabbit Rabbit (Scruffy Bumps)
- Adaptational Villainy: The Squishmallows characters are almost all jerks of one type or another, as a Take That! to the company for supporting the occupation of Palestine. Cam is especially so because one of the authors particularly dislikes Cam's treatment of Fifi in the Squishville cartoons.
- All Jews Are Ashkenazi: Averted; Cam is, but Scruffy is Afro-Palestinian, and the Year of the Rabbit and Year of the Dragon Plushie Dreadfuls are Sephardic Chinese.
- Asshole Victim: Both of them to each other, to some extent, Scruffy being more the victim than Cam. Scruffy Bumps says some thoroughly unpleasant things to Cam, but Cam then smears him, a Jewish man, as an antisemite.
- Boomerang Bigot: Cam is trans and intersex, but willing to misgender Scruffy Bumps out of malice, though Scruffy is also both those things. He's also Jewish and spreads horrible rumours about Jewish people who support Palestine, including claiming they're antisemitic.
- Catfishing: Cam really is a young Israeli intersex trans man, but he's paid by the government to stir shit on social media in favour of Israel.
- Does Not Like Men: Regina, Seluna, and Sunny are radical feminists.
- Eurabia: Not actually a thing in-universe or out, but some of the characters seem to think that it would be the result of the world supporting Palestine over Israel.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Cam really did have a horrible thing happen to him, suffering a serious genital mutilation in infancy and being raised as the wrong gender. This isn't used as an excuse for or even related to his behaviour now, though.
- Groin Attack: Cam lost his penis as an infant in a botched circumcision.
- It's All About Me: Cam butts into conversations which had nothing to do with Israel to talk about how horrible anti-Zionists are.
- Heel–Face Turn: Plushie Dreadfuls' original autism-representing rabbit, the Hope Bunny, was designed by Autism Speaks, an organisation which does a lot of harm to autistic people. When they received complaints, they discontinued it and designed the Autism 2.0 Bunny with more input from autistic designers. In the fanfic universe, Hope Bunny is Autism 2.0 Bunny's big sister who was used as a poster child for ABA therapy and used to think it worked, but has now realised her therapist was abusing her and promotes less harmful autism acceptance.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Scruffy is rude, hostile, ill-wishes Cam, and accuses him of causing "'unclear' sexual situations" with little evidence, which doesn't help him get people on his side when Cam smears his name, but he's right that Cam is both a worse jerk accusing far more people of worse things and a psyop intentionally provoking fights to make anti-Zionists look bad.
- Malicious Misnaming: Scruffy's name here is "Aswad", so Cam derisively refers to him as "Asswad".
- Manipulative Editing: Cam and Lola share things Scruffy said to them with parts removed to make him look worse, such as censoring out the part blaming Cam in "(You’re really just looking for ANY reason to say) the people of turtle island are dumb and uncivilized."
- Must Have Caffeine: Matcha Bunny is very disappointed that Big Coffee supports a cause they find morally repulsive so they can't buy from them anymore; the other characters suggest alternatives.
- Punny Name: NPD Bunny goes by "daffodillop" as daffodils are related to the narcissus flower.
- Raised as the Opposite Gender: Cam was raised as a girl following a botched circumcision and transitioned back to male as a teen.
- Sdrawkcab Name: "Tibbar Tibbar" is "Rabbit Rabbit" backwards.
- Shout-Out: Social Phobia Opossum describes an ink leak staining their plushie as "blue on the Thing".
- Take That!: The chapter is a callout of the Squishmallows company for donating to Israel, the authors being careful to note that not supporting Israel's occupation of Palestine is not an excuse for antisemitism and that the Squishmallows characters are only representing internet arguments while characters with a more "dignified" origin represent the people doing the actual fighting and dying in other chapters.
- That Old-Time Prescription: Lilac Mushroom Bunny uses and recommends herbal medicine because she lives on a reservation with no easy access to a doctor, though she does recommend Banana Bunny see a professional doctor if she can.
En Feey Ekawkawwawpamiht (Violet Parr)
- Cassandra Truth: She genuinely is Metis. However, because she looks white and was raised in mainstream white culture, once Syndrome outs her, everyone assumes she was a faker.
- Driven to Suicide: Everyone assumes she's considering it following her rape, but Violet makes it clear that, while she is suffering, she's not intending to take her life.
- Honorary Uncle: Frozone is considered her uncle, while his wife and Edna Mode are the gender-flipped version.
- Meaningful Name: Her name is Michif for "The Invisible Girl", which represents her feelings over being white-coded and her family being forcibly assimilated into white culture.
- Shrinking Violet: She's rather shy and embracing her true heritage is what allows her to come out of her shell. Once Syndrome rapes her and then turns everyone against her, she retreats back to herself.
