Project New Era
is a Bluey fanfic by Kodiwolf321, The-Suburban-Guy, and Loyalguard600 about two friends Thomas 'Titan' Gomez and Jonas 'Jinx' Miller who, as part of a government project on a deteriorating Earth, are hurtled across dimensions in order to find a potential new home for humanity. Separated from each other in transit, they crash-land in another universe, where find that they've gained various superpowers. That universe just so happens to be the Bluey universe.
Project New Era provides examples of:
- Adult Adoptee: Thomas, 18, is accepted into the Heeler family as one of their own. Bandit even has documents forged to give Thomas a false backstory just in case.
- Alternate Universe: Putting the Bluey universe in context with a human universe turns it from an implicit alternate universe into an intentional one, complete with the various similarities and differences being noted throughout the story.
- Ascended Extra: Alfie, a fan-favorite One-Shot Character in the original series, gets an expanded role in this fan fic as Thomas's coworker and friend.
- Barrier Warrior: One of Thomas's main powers is to project shields.
- Black Sheep: A super-powered human is adopted by a family of dog people. Pretty obvious instance.
- Combo Platter Powers: Thomas's powerset doesn't follow a particular theme, other than them all having a violet-colored aura.
- Continuity Nod: Plenty of unexplained references are made to various Bluey episodes, such as the Heelers have a lot of purple underwear.
- Crack Fic: Project New Era is basically a melodramatic young adult novel that just so happens to rope in the Bluey setting, in spite of the clear dissonance of genres.
- Eating Contest: Used to conveniently grant the Heelers prize money so they can rent a house next to Gepetto when they're inside Pinocchio.
- Evil Former Friend: Thomas's friend Jonas is suddenly overtaken by evil upon crossing dimensions, creating the main antagonist of the fic. He renames himself Jinx, after his callsign from the titular project, and vows to take over this world.
- Family of Choice: Thomas with the Heelers. Notably, it turns out that Thomas's late birth parents were his universe's counterparts of Bandit and Chilli, with Thomas being the counterpart of Chilli's stillborn child Baxter.
- Friend in the Black Market: Bandit finalizes black market deals concerning artifacts with his friend Max Hund. These deals are apparently organized by the museum Bandit works for.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Thomas manages to, in less than a day, fashion an advanced drone-mounted learning AI out of the 2020s-era technology available in Bluey's world.
- Happily Adopted: The Heelers have integrated Thomas into their family very well.
- Healing Factor: One of Thomas's most-used powers, considering he gets into a lot of fights. He's also able to use it on other people.
- Humanity Ensues: The Heelers upon entering Pinocchio, although they're actually pretty chill with it.
- Marshmallow Dream: Such a past incident is mentioned by Thomas in Chapter 17: one time, he woke up to Bingo trying to eat his socks while muttering about waffles.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The appearance of Rodan in Chapter 11 implies this possibility, and the author's note confirms that the wider multiverse will be introduced little by little.
- Mind over Matter: Another one of Thomas's powers is telekinesis, which he initially learns when he accidentally causes the bed he's sleeping on to float while he's having a nightmare.
- Most Fanfic Writers Are Fans: Various Bluey factoids are referenced, such as having Bandit be a fan of the band Custard, which IRL his voice actor is a member of.
- Multilayer Façade: Thomas, being a super-powered human being in a world of dog people, maintains the safety of the Heelers by shape-shifting into a dog and going by his middle name Jason; this identity in turn has its own secret super-hero identity named Austra-Violet.
- Nerd Hoard: Stripe has the second-largest collection of comics in Brisbane (in a series of banker boxes in his office), consulting it in order to figure out how Thomas's powers may work.
- Obligatory Swearing: Arguably justified, due to the main characters being the adults instead of the children as in the original series.
- Portal Book: Chapters 15-19 involve the Heelers being sucked into a copy of Pinocchio that fell from the southern lights in the sky.
- Pursuing Parental Perils: After his parents, the main technicians of Project New Era, died in a fire-induced building collapse, he took up the mantle of working on said project.
- Robot Buddy: Wilbur, the advanced AI drone Thomas constructs.
- Shapeshifting: An important power of Thomas's, considering that it's what allows him to walk around without being identified as one of the two super-powered alien that showed up. Although he can shape-shift into anybody (as long as they're around the same height as him), he usually takes the form of a specific self-created dog person in order to blend in. Notably, this form looks exactly like Baxter, Chilli's stillborn child, and Bandit has a minor breakdown processing this.
- Spock Speak: Wilbur (being an AI) speaks like this, with inclusions of colloquialisms being Played for Laughs.
- Teleportation: One of the later powers Thomas learns.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Part of the basic premise: due to the transport shuttle malfunctioning, Thomas and Jonas are stranded in the Bluey universe.
