Preamble

Shown here is the extensive list of author’s notes and other musings on the first installment of CHS, all for your perusal! Development notes, fun facts, concepts that didn’t make the cut—it’s all here, baby! You can use the navigation here to jump to specific sections, or click here to go back! Obvious warning though, these WILL contain spoilers for the fic itself, so make sure to read the chapters beforehand if you don’t wanna be spoiled!

The Fic Itself:

(General) (Welcome to Skylands 2-Parter) (Sky Schooner Docks) (Stormy Stronghold 2-Parter) (A New Apprentice) (Empire of Ice) (Oilspill Island) (Dark Water Cove) (Leviathan Lagoon) (Crystal Eye Castle 2-Parter) (Stonetown) (Pirate Seas 2-Parter) (Treetop Terrace) (Falling Forest 2-Parter) (Troll Warehouse) (Goo Factory) (Battlefield) (Crawling Catacombs) (Creepy Citadel) (Dragon’s Peak 2-Parter) (Darklight Crypt) (Molekin Mine) (Lava Lakes Railway) (Quicksilver Vault) (Arkeyan Armory 2-Parter) (Lair of Kaos 2-Parter) (The Final Battle)

The Dream Cast:

(General) (English) (Japanese) (Korean) (Italian) (French) (Chinese) (LatAm Spanish) (Brazilian Portuguese) (European Spanish) (Dutch) (German) (Polish) (Danish) (Finnish) (Norwegian) (Swedish) (Russian)

General

• First of all, some stats:

  • Final fic length (following completion and edits in preparation for mirroring): 876,913, counting author’s notes from FFnet mirror.

  • Individual chapter word counts (including author’s notes):

    • Welcome to Skylands, Part 1: 9,900 (shortest chapter)

    • Welcome to Skylands, Part 2: 10,379

    • Sky Schooner Docks: 13,368

    • Stormy Stronghold, Part 1: 12,327

    • Stormy Stronghold, Part 2: 13,645

    • A New Apprentice: 17,215

    • Empire of Ice: 20,564

    • Oilspill Island: 17,598

    • Dark Water Cove: 19,727

    • Leviathan Lagoon: 21,591

    • Crystal Eye Castle, Part 1: 19,906

    • Crystal Eye Castle, Part 2: 20,850

    • Stonetown: 35,918

    • Pirate Seas, Part 1: 18,644

    • Pirate Seas, Part 2: 20,230

    • Treetop Terrace: 23,470

    • Falling Forest, Part 1: 26,740

    • Falling Forest, Part 2: 25,932

    • Troll Warehouse: 29,330

    • Goo Factory: 30,930

    • Battlefield: 36,999

    • Crawling Catacombs: 39,253

    • Creepy Citadel: 36,214

    • Dragon’s Peak, Part 1: 28,869

    • Dragon’s Peak, Part 2: 25,833

    • Darklight Crypt: 39,686

    • Molekin Mine: 40,025

    • Lava Lakes Railway: 36,098

    • Quicksilver Vault: 41,777 (longest chapter)

    • Arkeyan Armory, Part 1: 29,249

    • Arkeyan Armory, Part 2: 23,815

    • Lair of Kaos, Part 1: 25,575

    • Lair of Kaos, Part 2: 31,873

    • The Final Battle: 33,383

  • Development Length: Approx. eight years, counting initial conception & revisions. (First conceived sometime in early-mid spring 2012; initially finished on December 28th, 2020)

  • Release Length: Approx. one year, six months, and twenty-eight days. (Initially published on May 2nd, 2019; initially finished on December 28th, 2020)

• CHS, as I’ve mentioned on the main page, is a series that’s been with me for like, a good majority of my life. I got into Skylanders in early 2012 when I was knees-deep in an Invader Zim hyperfix, caught a glimpse of Kaos while watching my brothers play, freaking out (in a good way) over him basically being “wizard Zim”, and playing it at my brother’s suggestion, and the series quickly took over my whole existence.

• Around… March-April, I want to say? I got an idea: since the Skylanders came from Skylands and a portal master from Earth sent them back, what if a portal master from Earth ended up in Skylands instead? While it’s been done plenty of times over now, the concept was still new and novel when the series had just started out, and it would not leave me alone until I got the impulse to write the earliest drafts on the family iPad’s Notes app. It’s gone through many, many, revisions and developments since then. I don’t exactly have most of the early versions anymore, so I don’t recall the exact date that I first wrote it. This is why I tend to treat May 2nd, the day I published the first installment’s first chapter online, as its anniversary instead since it’s close to the timeframe and just as significant.

• On an impulse, I finally pushed myself to start publishing the actual story online after talking about the characters extensively. I honestly might have chickened out if not for my friends encouraging me the whole time, so thanks, guys! I then proceeded to finally publish it over the course of the year, starting with a backlog from when I’d first started one of many rewrites around 2016-2017ish? I steadily moved on from there, barring a few hiatuses for the sake of drawing up a backlog and dealing with life stuff, and in particular seriously pushed myself to ensure that it would be finished before the end of 2020. I’m still proud that I managed that deadline in spite of everything.

• Given its heavy anime influences, I’ve naturally entertained the idea of my ideal staff, music, etc for if it was an actual anime.

  • Animation Studio: toss-up between Studio Bones (based on their work for BNHA, which I believe would allow them to translate the character designs to a more animesque format fairly well, as well as their animation for the GOTCHA! music video for Pokemon), Studio Madhouse (based on their work for Frieren, mainly), and Toei Animation (given that they have a history of working on adaptations of toyetic kids series).

  • Opening Theme: To Your Town by Asian Kung-Fu Generation.

  • First Ending Theme (from the beginning of the series to the end of the Life Source arc): My World by Asian Kung-Fu Generation.

  • Second Ending Theme (from the beginning of the Tech Source arc to the end of the series): Journey of Dappled Sunlight by Stereopony.

• Initially, the cast was largely just going to focus on Chihiro, Spyro, Gill Grunt, Trigger Happy, and later on, Stealth Elf. However, during one particular rewrite session, I’d ultimately decided to use a rotating cast of Skylanders instead, just to ensure that they would all get some time to shine. Though I still have the designated “main eight”, each chapter would have a different group of Skylanders get the focus, which I think worked to its benefit. It was definitely interesting to pick out which characters should appear when and deep-dive into how they should be characterized and what conflicts I could get out of them.

• Speaking of Chihiro, there were quite a few main differences to how she was characterized in the final version of the story:

  • Rather than having to learn magic as she went, she pretty quickly picked up her portal master powers and had the full-fledged title right away, but I axed that in favor of her status in the final story as a young apprentice who has to learn the ropes. This was because the story became more fleshed-out and serious, and Chihiro in turn developed more as a character so I wanted a way to showcase that.

  • She also used a staff for a weapon, but I couldn’t figure out how to work it in, so that got axed in favor of her current moveset.

  • Chihiro was originally the oldest of five kids, and had two younger sisters and another younger brother in addition to Mamoru. However, the younger three siblings ended up becoming less and less relevant after multiple rewrites, so I cut it down to just her and Mamoru.

  • Chihiro being a mixed Ainu/Japanese immigrant was something that had been set in stone for quite a while, but her hometown in the States flip-flopped a bit from Treasure Lake (which is an actual place, btw) to a fictional town called Merlington and back again.

  • A lot of the early drafts of her character were a bit more comedic, and tended to play up her hyperactivity, quipping, and adventurousness/recklessness, as well as her whole thing of wanting to live out her favorite video games. As the story got more serious over development, however, that aspect of her character got seriously toned down because it didn’t lend well to the story I wanted to tell. She’s still got her quirks and quips, but she’s a bit more rounded-out as a character.

• The organization of the chapters is done a bit differently depending on the mirrors. On FFnet, the chapters are one whole, large chapter, but here, the chapters are treated more like “books” and are divided into one-to-two (or more, depending on individual length) segment chapters. This is mainly to save space on Neocities and make things feel less lengthy.

Welcome to Skylands 2-Parter

• This pair of chapters probably has the biggest difference between mirrors. On FFnet, this is treated as a two-parter, but here on Neocities, the two chapters are fused into one. This was something I actually flip-flopped on multiple times over the course of the story’s development and many rewrites! The two characters happen in a very short timespan, but I decided to break them up in two because I figured it would be a fitting start. However, because they’re both so short and happen so close together, here on Neocities they’re fused into one. As a result of this, the actual book/chapter count on Neocities is one shorter than FFNet’s.

• The beginning of the story mainly draws from Hugo’s story regarding the citadel’s destruction in SSA, as well as “The Beginning”, the promo trailer for Spyro’s Adventure. I figured a fusion of the two pieces made for a mostly-full story.

• Eon’s Citadel/The Ruins being named Ancient’s Peak is taken from SuperChargers, which implies that this is a historic name for the island as a whole. In CHS canon, Ancient’s Peak has been a stronghold for portal masters for generations, so it didn’t really make sense to define it solely by its relationship to one portal master, or its ruined status in the present. Thus, Ancient’s Peak it is!

• Spyro’s eyes changing color based on what element he controls (as shown by him channeling the Light Element to get him and Gill Grunt to the Core) is a long-standing headcanon of mine and I had to use it. In addition, I also had him use his status as “purple dragon who controls all the elements” to his full potential here, instead of just sticking to Fire and Magic like he does in canon, mostly because it made for better fight scenes.

• Also, the Light Element gets a bit of an early-bird cameo here to establish that Light and Dark as elements are known about right off the bat instead of being discovered later. I always thought that was kind of dumb, and there is precedent for it considering that Toys for Bob wanted the elements as far back as the Spyro’s Kingdom days but couldn’t get them in until Trap Team because of executive concerns about character bloat.

• As mentioned above, I modeled the big fight scene after the fight in The Beginning, but expanded it a little to give focus shots to all the main Skylanders, just to establish them as major players right off the bat.

• Also another big change: here, Master Eon explicitly dies rather than having his soul and body separated like in canon. Master Eon’s death scene here was meant to serve as quick foreshadowing for Chihiro coming to Skylands and awakening her portal master powers, hence the line “If I am leaving Skylands now, may someone else defend it in my place.”

• There’s also some slight differences in the scene where Hugo discovers his corpse in the aftermath of the battle. Originally, it outright said that Hugo found his corpse, but I felt that was too tacky and killed the suspense, so I made it a bit vaguer.

• Chihiro's mother is named Anzu. This is mentioned in a couple of the supplementary things on here like the cast list, but since we see things mainly from Chihiro's perspective, we don’t really get to hear Anzu’s name because it would be a bit weird for Chihiro to call her mom by her first name.

• “There was no way her mother would let her play T-rated games when she was only eleven… But, her mother wasn't here! Chihiro could do whatever she wanted!” – This was loosely inspired by something that actually happened when I was like, eight-nine and my mom rented an E10+ game from one of those game rental services. I had a full-blown anxiety attack because I was technically too young to play it according to the rating, and my poor mom had to reassure me everything was fine. In hindsight, I wonder if this was probably an early manifestation of my OCD…

• Last Fallacy, the game series that Chihiro plays through, is a reference to Final Fantasy. One of the in-universe lore rules for CHS is that only Skylanders, and by extension the broader Spyro franchise, exist as-is in-universe. Every other real world pop culture franchise just has an in-world equivalent to help with worldbuilding and avoid copyright concerns/not come off as too dated.

• “Man, it'd be nice to have a friend like that, Chihiro's smile turned to a frown as she clasped a hand against the window's glass. Not like anyone would wanna be mine.” – First hints at Chihiro being a bullying victim.

• “In the crater was a figure of a purple and gold dragon, mounted on a dark blue pedestal that was covered in crescent moons, stars, and other runic symbols. "What are you?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the figure as she rotated it.” – Something something “meeting your soulmate for the first time and not even realizing it yet.”

• The Skylanders being able to communicate with each other via telepathy is also taken from The Beginning and the various commercials/trailers in general, which seemingly imply that they can do so while in toy form. Chihiro being able to pick up on their thoughts was meant to be one of the first hints to her being a portal master, as it felt like a logical way to establish that.

• In the story, Anzu mentions that Chihiro has to go to bed because tomorrow is a school day, which is what interrupts her attempts to bring the Skylanders back to Skylands… Except I’d already established that the story begins the day before Spyro’s Adventure’s North American launch, which was on a weekend. Whoops. Let’s just say the calendar was a bit different here.

• Spyro, Gill Grunt and Trigger Happy’s nicknames for each other are taken from the tie-in books and other supplementary material, which were used to establish their close friendship.

• The Skylanders musing on Earth’s tech is partly meant to establish how different Skylands is as a much more high-fantasy world compared to Earth, and because I thought it would be fun to envision how they’d think of it. Also, their concern over Eon’s fate is partly meant to build up to them finding out about Eon’s death.

• Speaking of Eon’s death, during edits, I also added in a quick bit about Hugo giving Spyro Master Eon’s helmet to formally confirm that Eon had passed on, just because I felt it would give a bit more weight to the situation.

• The passage of time being much faster in Skylands than it was on Earth was mainly a way to explain how Chihiro could be gone for weeks or even months at a time without her parents freaking out mainly, and also to explain how Kaos could have conquered so much of Skylands so quickly. I initially had the passage of time be closer to that of Earth’s, but that became very tough to write around so Narnia time it was.

• If you didn’t pick up on it then, the mabu kid who asks Spyro if everything’s okay is supposed to be Quigley. He just isn’t named because he isn’t relevant lol.

• Kaos was originally going to have all the Eternal Sources in his possession, which is why the heroes had to constantly fight him to get them. However, that plot thread got scrapped pretty quickly because… Well, when it came down to it, I just plain lost interest in it. It was much more compelling to have him and the heroes neck-in-neck to find them. Him having the Eternal Air Source and Spyro’s little convo with Hugo here were remnants of that.

• Gill Grunt sleeping through Flynn’s ride is a Mask of Power reference, iirc. In Gill Grunt and the Curse of the Fish Master, Gill Grunt claims that the Warrior Librarians were almost as skilled as Flynn… In spite of the fact that Flynn is canonically supposed to be an awful pilot. I figured that if Gill Grunt thinks Flynn is a good pilot, he’d probably be able to sleep through the ride.

• Perilous Pastures gets skipped over here so we can get to the big, defining moment everyone’s waiting for: Chihiro getting sent to Skylands! I’d initially just had her portal going on the fritz I think, but needed a more compelling reason beyond a freak accident to bring her there. That was when I got the idea of the power going out and her sending herself to Skylands to make sure her new friends were doing alright and help guide them, and the rest was history.

• Also, the whole thing about it being dangerous for portal masters to use portals on themselves is pulled from Giants. The actual canon tends to flip-flop a bit on this (Kaos has issues, but Kaossandra uses them in her boss fight perfectly fine, and the RoH portal masters can use their portals to travel between Earth and Skylands with little fuss), but here it’s firmly established as something you should absolutely not do. Well, unless you wanna rip apart space and time as you know it, anyways.

• “Now, I've met a couple humans in my life, but I've never known of a single one in Skylands with five fingers!” – Cali’s referencing how humans in Skylands all seem to have four fingers rather than five.

• “But you're not that much older that I am and YOU do it!” – Chihiro's speaking the truth here. In CHS canon, Spyro is about a year or two older than her in human years, making him about twelve or thirteen when the story begins. He just acts wise beyond his years because his heroics and the responsibility they put on him forced him to grow up fast.

Sky Schooner Docks

• Chihiro and Spyro’s contrasting attitudes and Chihiro getting in over her head were some of the most interesting things about this chapter to me. Chihiro is a kid who grew up on a steady diet of idealized adventures that she’d dreamed about living out in real life, and naturally she’s all too eager to bring her dreams to life… But, she’s woefully under-prepared to actually get in the field and gets herself in a lot of trouble. By comparison, Spyro’s had a good deal of heroics under his belt and knows what he’s doing, which is why he’s not very patient with Chihiro and her antics, especially considering that she wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place. Thus, they butt heads!

• “Chihiro Hatsuki, what in Eon's name were you thinking?!” - Somewhere in the spirit realms, Master Eon has just sneezed. In all seriousness, Eon being used as an expression here ended up being a bit of early-installment weirdness, so to speak, considering I later scrapped that in favorite of largely using the Ancients and other deities as expressions instead.

• Spyro getting used as living artillery/cannon fuel here is a cheeky reference to how the game represented the turret segments as your Skylanders jumping in the turrets and powering them through Skylander magic IG. I imagine that would be somewhat unpleasant though, so the

• “Guess I took you for a little spin, huh Golden Boy?” – and here, we see the beginnings of Chihiro’s famous pet name for Spyro.

• The big drow fight was meant to really set the stage for Chihiro, and make it clear to her that she’s still got a lot to learn… But ultimately, it’s her genre-savyness from her love of fiction that saves the day! Though she ultimately does have a ways to go, Chihiro is a bit more acclimated to the adventures she faces more than the average person because she’s lived and breathed this stuff for years, so to her it’s like water to a fish once she finds her footing.

• "Fairy magic has this wonderful ability to increase the abilities of those it is given to. In largest amounts, it could make someone even stronger than Traptanium!" – Persephone’s line here is an early hint to Trap Team.

• Speaking of Persephone, there was originally going to be a plot where she would serve as a mole for Kaos, who forced her to do so for the sake of keeping her kingdom safe, which was how Kaos was always seemingly one step ahead of the heroes. Eventually, the heroes would find out and head to the Fairy Kingdom to liberate it from Kaos’s clutches. However, Persephone ended up being much less relevant than I anticipated she’d be and it got too hard to work the mole plot in, so I just axed that angle and established the Fairy Kingdom subplot outright.

• Originally, Chihiro was going to stay in Master Eon’s old study for the duration of her stay in Skylands, but it felt a little weird with Eon eventually coming back, and not to mention the place was completely wrecked, so the idea of her staying in a place the Skylanders used when they needed people to stay with them came instead.

• As mentioned in the FFnet author’s notes, the Sanctuaries originally came from the mobile game Skylanders Lost Islands. I’ve always thought of them as something akin to the Skylanders’ barracks, and naturally brought that over. Since they take a teleporter there, I guess the island’s distant enough from the rest of Ancient’s Peak that we don’t really see them.

• Lastly, another one of my favorite parts of this chapter: establishing Spyro’s guilt over being unable to stop the Core of Light’s destruction, and the beginnings of his relationship with Chihiro! Spyro takes his position and role as a hero incredibly seriously, and Kaos winning in such a manner is established as one of his worst fears in the tie-in books, so naturally he would take such a failure extremely personally, even if he refuses to show it because he feels he doesn’t deserve to sulk over his own failings.

• Chihiro, meanwhile, doesn’t think of that when she sees Spyro. She sees her friend who’s clearly hurting and in need in some comfort, and doesn’t care about anything else. Chihiro cares so deeply about everyone around her, and nothing can stop that from changing. If someone needs a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, or an ice cream sandwich, she’s the first one there. That ends up being what endears her to Spyro, and also leans into what’s sort of the story’s thesis statement: being a true hero isn’t just about being strong or smart, but having the courage and compassion to want to protect others.

Stormy Stronghold 2-Parter

• First off, we start this two-parter by establishing Spyro’s closeness to Master Eon and more hints at his budding relationship with Chihiro! The tie-in books seem to imply that Spyro was closest to Master Eon out of all the Skylanders; his worst fear in Mask of Power is Eon being imprisoned by Kaos, he was one of the first Skylanders, and most of the tie-in material notes that he holds Eon’s word in extremely high regard. Naturally, he’d probably be the most torn-up over losing Eon. Chihiro recognizes this, and desperately wants to help him, but there isn’t a whole lot she can do if he doesn’t open up to her—so, she just does what she can.

• Also, they mention going down stairs when they leave Chihiro's dorm, but then I remembered that there weren’t any stairs in the original building so I axed that when editing.

• The portal network’s roots come from the tie-in books, which note that Master Eon has a whole lot of portals that he uses for Skylander duties.

• "For that matter, we're missing a lot of people—Pop Fizz, Chill, Star Strike—" – referencing the post-Spyro’s Adventure Cores here! The canon implication seems to be that all the Cores were present during the battle against Kaos and got sent to Earth, but were just offscreen and got found later. I wanted to establish this little fact right off the bat, hence the reference.

• Chihiro’s innocent insensitivity towards Hugo is another bit of early-installment weirdness in how she was characterized. She was meant to come off as oblivious and meaning it as a complement, but it kinda clashes with her later characterization of being hyperempathetic and very tuned-in to others’ feelings. Funny how characters evolve, huh?

• “’I don't know what we're going to do. Kaos has us completely outnumbered, and he's already conquered most of Skylands. Even with a new portal master and most of the Skylanders back, I don't think there's any way we could stop him,’ Hugo croaked as tears started to fall down his cheeks and he hugged the book tightly. ‘I wish you were still here, Master Eon.’” — this is meant to foreshadow Master Eon’s return at the end of the two-parter.

• I’m not sure if I matched Whirlwind and Warnado together because of Whirlwind being the one to scout Warnado as a Skylander in his extended backstory or not. I don’t think it was. Their twister vs tornado debate did give me a chuckle, though!

• Chihiro freaked out after getting separated from Spyro because the RSD hit, and she honest-to-god thought he really was going to hate her forever because of said RSD clouding her judgement. I think this scene actually was what tipped off one reviewer in particular that she was supposed to be neurodivergent, so kudos to that person for recognizing it!

• Whirlwind’s rainbow trick was a personal favorite way to toy around with her healing rainbows! I always liked coming up with creative ways to use their existing movesets~

• Chihiro and Spyro getting out of the library also ended up being a favorite scene, just because it more-or-less ends up being a cornerstone of their relationship. This time, Spyro’s the one to encourage her when she’s down, and that one little moment sticks with her as someone who’s not used to being treated with such grace and kindness when she screws up. The two care for each other in turns, so to speak, and this and the prior chapter are what establishes that.

• "Well, I was thinking about footage I saw from the game itself, and I remembered—in some levels, they have these magical trampoline pad thingies that you jump on!" — Chihiro’s seen Spyro’s Adventure’s gameplay due to Skylanders being an in-universe game, which is obviously how she know what a bounce pad is, even though she doesn’t remember the name.

• Spyro having a photographic memory is another thing taken from the tie-in books.

• "No, no, it's just…" Chihiro jerked up and looked at Spyro before she shook her head and smiled slightly. "Nobody's really told me that before, or ever actually bothered to apologize to me in the first place." — as you can guess, Chihiro is really not used to people actually caring about her. This part was meant to serve as an early allusion to her being a bullying victim.

• Much like how Skyro’s character combines aspects of Classic and Legends Spyro, the same is true of CHS Skyro. His personality is modeled more after his Legends counterpart, but his backstory is taken from his classic self, complete with him outright referencing the events of Spyro the Dragon and Spyro 3 when talking to Chihiro.

• Another one of the fun bits I couldn’t resist doing: having a confrontation with Kaos and/or his evil minions for each of the Eternal Source fights instead of just a few! Kid me always kind of wondered why only some Eternal Sources got boss fights and not the others, so this was my way of addressing that. Also of note is that the evil minions were mostly just mindless puppets of Kaos and wouldn’t speak initially, which is why none of the Evil Air Minions had dialogue originally. I axed that pretty early because it got boring and went for their current characterization instead.

• The tornado corrupting from the evil minion magic was also meant to be another way of spicing up the original boss fights. Rather than just beating some bad guys or solving puzzles, I wanted to do something interesting with each fight, and having to stop a natural disaster seemed like a good way to handle this one.

• Also, another fun tidbit: while editing the scene where the tornado appears, the playlist I was listening to put on Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins, and I had to pause and laugh just because of how thematically appropriate it was.

• Whirlwind’s healing rainbows can cure injuries and purify corrupt magic, if you’re curious about the bevy of their skills.

• Master Eon’s change in appearance—namely, that he’s a floating ball of light instead of a head—is due to the differing circumstances surrounding his fate. In the original, he was just a soul separated from its body and thus regained some semblance of his appearance, but here, he straight-up died and came back from the afterlife, hence why he’s more formless. Also it was more fun to work with him as a ball of light.

A New Apprentice

• This chapter was made as a way of bridging the gap in Chihiro’s skills, essentially. See, I’d established off the bat that she was still inexperienced and couldn’t really go out in the field much because of this, but later chapters had her hanging around the Skylanders in ways that couldn’t easily be written out. So, I made this to showcase the fateful moment where Chihiro becomes Eon’s apprentice, and used her studying under him to justify her later adventures.

• Perilous Pastures is referenced here partly to make up for skipping it over.

• The portal master exams were inspired by the witch apprentice exams from Ojamajo Doremi, which I was binge-watching at the time I was writing the front-end of the story. Originally she was just going to study magic under him, but I felt that the exams would be better benchmarks of her progress, so exams it was!

• Chihiro’s psyched out because of all the important things she has to do as Eon’s apprentice, which serves as the central conflict from here on out. She’s wanted to be a hero like the ones in her favorite stories for so long, but now that the weight of what that really entails is starting to make itself apparent, she’s getting psyched out! She’s got all these things relying on her ability to protect everyone, and obviously she’s going to worry about how she can handle that all.

• “Come on, gimme an energy sphere, just like those ones in Hydra Sphere!” – Hydra Sphere is the in-universe equivalent of Dragon Ball.

• Master Eon doesn’t know what a TV or cartoons are because tech is different in Skylands, so they don’t have TV.

• Chihiro and her beloved swords also get their first start here, given her excitement over getting to summon her own swords.

• As Master Eon mentions in the story, portal master studies are more than just being super strong. Rather, the curriculum requires the young apprentice to become someone who’s well-rounded and thus, well-equipped to handle whatever comes for them. So, it’s not just about casting spells and fighting, but encompasses many other areas: etiquette, studying rules and legislation, problem-solving… This is all just a tiny glimpse of the typical studies.

• The whole thing about the plural of cyclops is actually something I had to look up when writing this chapter lol. Iirc the actual games use “cyclopses”, but the proper plural is cyclopes, thus why I’m using it.

• Terrafin sleeping on the ship is a reference to Book of Elements: Air & Earth, which notes that he’s so scared of flying that Master Eon has to make him fall asleep every time he has to fly.

• “Even though Drill Sergeant called everyone "sir," out of habit, something about him calling her that made her feel… Happier, for lack of a better word.” – that better word is gender euphoria 83.

• The Windbag Djinn is just called Windbag here since I’m pretty sure these things are nothing alike the actually jinn from Islamic folklore, so I see no reason to call them that.

• Chihiro is especially freaked out by the fight because her worst nightmares are coming to life before her eyes. Her friends are getting hurt before her and she’s powerless to do anything to help them, and this worst-case scenario pushes her over the edge.

• Originally, Spyro was going to comfort Chihiro after her failed training following her outburst, but I didn’t want to narrow down their interactions to just each other, so I had Master Eon comfort her and instead had him reference the events of the prior two-parter since he and Spyro talked the nights before.

• "I'm just some kid from Earth. I'm no Master Eon, heck, I'm no average Eon!" – still one of my personal favorite lines.

• The way magic works in Skylands is that it’s essentially a manifestation of one’s thoughts, willed to life by both the magic energy in their body and their own feelings. Thus, emotions can seriously impact one’s ability to perform magic, because it’s hard to envision things when your emotions cloud your judgment.

Empire of Ice

• First off, a funny note: I published this chapter on FFnet the day a massive heat wave hit my area, and the irony of that was not lost on me.

• Vindlevale being a nomadic island was meant to explain how it came to Ancient’s Peak without portal master intervention, since we won’t have Chihiro using the adventure pack pieces here.

• This chapter also gives us the first hints at Eruptor and Slam Bam’s relationship. The way they interacted in Eruptor Meets the Nightmare King made me seriously ship them, and they’re still one of my favorite couples today, so naturally I had to have them interact.

• Eruptor’s characterization here was more influenced by his dorkier aspects in the later games like Imaginators, hence why his dorkiness is played up here.

• Noodles and the ice ogres got tossed in early here because it felt thematically appropriate, considering the similar subject matter of an icy wasteland land.

• Chihiro and Spyro’s dynamic shines here once again as well! Chihiro’s all too eager to get into the field and show off her fancy new powers, but Spyro, who’s more experienced and also desperate to make up for his failure, is not entertaining any of it.

• The evil minions get more characterization starting from this chapter as well. In terms of how I characterized them, I generally went with two directions: they’re either meant to be the polar opposites of their regular counterparts, or their regular counterparts’ traits are exaggerated to a negative degree.

• “’Well, I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose,’ Gill Grunt remarked as he coughed into his webbed hand and collected himself. ‘But what would he have to gain from taking over this tiny little island?’” – Kaos actually didn’t want Vindlevale all that much besides expanding his empire, in all honesty. At most, he might’ve thought it would be a good way to distract the Skylanders and buy him time to find the Eternal Water Source.

• The evil minions using feminine language for Chihiro when most others typically use masculine or gender-neutral language for her was very much so intentional.

• Chihiro’s observant towards others, and very close to her friends, which is why she quickly picked up on the evil minions being fakers. They didn’t get the small details, like Eruptor and Slam Bam always using pet names for each other.

• Chihiro learning how to ice skate was probably one of my favorite parts to write from this chapter. Figuring out all the little details and having her goof around with her friends is always fun.

Oilspill Island

• Chihiro’s residual guilt over Spyro getting sick is meant to sow seeds for future chapters regarding her personal conflicts.

• Whirlwind’s healing powers can’t heal sickness, but I imagine that they can at least alleviate some of the common aches and pains that come with being sick, hence why she offered to help out. She’s sort of the Skylanders’ medic due to her healing powers because of this.

• The torches on the beach staircase changing color depending on element is an actual thing that happens in the game.

• I also liked messing around with how to open lock puzzles, since just having them shake them up and unlock them would get too boring.

• The beach confinement system used to be a way to trap unwanted intruders, but largely got abandoned as it saw less and less use. I mainly came up with the idea to explain why Ancient’s Peak would have something like that in the first place.

• Zap talking like a surfer dude is a long-standing headcanon of mine.

• Wham-Shell’s urgency and nerves over Oilspill Island getting invaded by trolls are hinting towards his backstory. The whole story’s a bit too familiar for him...

• Delilah, the name of Gurglefin’s ship, was an impulse pick.

• This also introduces two of the running gags for this arc: Gurglefin getting bullied on his own ship, and the long drop down Ancient’s Peak.

• "’Chihiro, for the love of Eon, slow down!’ Wham shouted as he clung tight to her arm.” – Somewhere on Ancient’s Peak, Master Eon has sneezed again. Once again, some more early-installment weirdness.

• "Careful is my middle name! Well, actually, I don't have a middle name—but the point still stands!" – Chihiro doesn’t have a middle name because of Japanese naming conventions. Japan doesn’t do middle names, so as a Japanese immigrant, she obviously wouldn’t have one.

• Trolls not being able to swim is a reference to Giants, where it's noted that Kaos had to drain the pools in his castle because the trolls kept falling in and drowning because they can't swim.

• Next, we get to the meat of the chapter: Wham-Shell having a flashback to the destruction of his own kingdom, which is why the trolls are so easily able to incapacitate him. It’s hard to fight when you’re in the middle of a PTSD flashback.

• "Last one there's a Tarclops!" – another development joke. Tarclops, now known in more recent years as Cyclops Snail, is the scrapped Skylander that eventually became Zap, hence why Zap’s the one who delivers the line.

• WRT Wham-Shell calling Zap a kid: in my personal headcanon, Wham-Shell is a young adult probably a good ways into his twenties, and Zap is close to Spyro and Chihiro’s age, putting him around early-mid teens. In general, I tried to keep ages kind of vague like they are in canon and because of what I call the “MLP principle” (so-called because the Mane Six of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are meant to be read as young adults, but generally tend to act a bit more immature when the moral of an episode calls for it), where how mature they act and their interactions tends to depend on how I want to tell the story.

• Wham-Shell was originally more vicious during the fight with the trolls, but it was changed to be more realistic. Since he’s in the middle of a bad flashback, he probably wouldn’t be too attentive to a fight.

• Wham-Shell’s real name, Neptune, is taken from the Roman god of the sea and Roman counterpart to Poseidon.

• Chihiro’s heroics and heart really shine when she protects Wham-Shell with Zap, in my opinion. She doesn’t care about his past failures, but immediately sees that he’s trying his best to atone for them, and that’s all that matters to her. Naturally, she’s not going to tolerate people knocking back on her friend like that.

• This chapter also became Wham-Shell’s moment to shine because I really liked working with his backstory! I feel like there’s a lot of potential with the angle of “king who failed to save his kingdom and spends the rest of his waking years atoning for his failure”.

• Wham-Shell’s arranged marriage was meant to set some things up for future installments. What things? I’m not just gonna spoil that!

Dark Water Cove

• First of all, Chihiro’s dream where she fights Kaos doesn’t have him match what he actually looks like at all solely for the comedy of it. How does she not know what he looks like despite having seen gameplay footage? Maybe she missed it.

• This chapter also builds up the “Liberating the Fairy Kingdom” subplot, and contains the first references to Dark Spyro being a separate character from regular Spyro instead of being his evil alter-ego like in canon.

• Spyro, naturally, is also upset at being relegated to island patrols because he feels that he’s wasting his time patrolling the island when he should be out there making up for his inability to stop Kaos. It’s another manifestation of his guilt over not being able to stop the Core of Light’s destruction!

• “What are these twin spouts of Osha-Maejo-Maino or whatever?” – the way Chihiro pronounces Ocea-Major-Minor is meant to be how it would pronounced in Japanese. Wonder how they matched up with the official Japanese dub.

• “Chihiro just stared at an invisible audience and shrugged her shoulders with an ever-clueless look on her face. ‘Geez, what's his deal?’” – couldn’t resist a little bit of fourth-wall breaking here~

• The pirate disguises were done on a whim, but I did enjoy coming up with them! Besides, it did feel like a logical choice to have them masquerade as pirates.

• Also, you all have no idea how much pirate talk I had to look up for this and the next chapter.

• “Geez, this is like walking through the hallways at school, Chihiro thought as she tried her best to force an aura of calm and collection. Except these guys are a lot more dangerous than my school bullies. Well, maybe.” – more allusions to Chihiro being a bullying victim.

• I also established warps in this chapter to foreshadow her getting her pendant at the very end of the story, and also to give some lore to the random warps in the levels because why not.

• The pirates were affiliated with Kaos here to give him some extra manpower, and also give a little weight to the situation by revealing that he had his eyes on the Twin Spouts as well.

• In this chapter, Chihiro muses that maybe a lot of time has passed and her family’s probably worried sick about her, but I already established early on that time passes much slower on Earth than it does in Skylands. As for why she forget that, Chihiro’s worried sick right now because of everything going wrong and kind of forgot about the passage of time.

• This chapter also contains the first hints of her struggling with invisibility spells, something that becomes a minor plot point later in the story.

• Chihiro’s pose when she finally sheds the disguise and faces the pirates is a Sailor Moon reference. I think that’s the little more obvious after the edits, where she outright namedrops the in-universe equivalent of Sailor Moon.

• I could not resist tossing a booty joke in there, just because I am not as above it all as I may seem.

• “She muttered something to herself that most certainly shouldn't have be said by an eleven-year-old, and stumbled back through the crowd.” – Chihiro was definitely cursing that imp out. Where did she learn curse words? Who knows.

• Chihiro using baseball-inspired attacks is something she picked up from Mamoru, who plays baseball.

• Gill Grunt’s hatred for pirates comes from his backstory, where pirates kidnapped his girlfriend.

• Also, this was the last chapter posted before my first big hiatus for this installment.

Leviathan Lagoon

• This chapter is notably a lot more comedy-focused compared to the others. It’s mostly a remnant from the early days when the story was more lighthearted and comedic, and also because I wanted to write a mostly silly and lighthearted chapter to send the arc off.

• Beautiful Remedy, the in-universe magical girl show that serves as Chihiro’s special interest, is based on Precure, specifically the first installment Futari wa Precure. I chose that installment specificially because in real life, CHS takes place around the time when Futari wa was still the crown jewel of the Precure fandom in terms of installments (iirc this was early enough that Heartcatch, which was the main one during the 2010s, was still on the fence due to old guard/new blood divide) and because this would be about a year after Futari wa’s Canadian English dub, Pretty Cure, had just finished its run and had a bit of a newbie boom from it. Thus, this logically felt like the “main” installment she’d be exposed to.

• Beautiful Remedy’s story is modeled after Futari wa’s, but also partially modeled after Chihiro’s current circumstances, hence her likening herself to the show’s protagonists.

• The Far-Viewer just making things more blurry when zoomed-in was meant to be more realistic, as a nod to how that usually doesn’t happen in stories.

• The Leviathan’s backstory was mostly what I thought would be morbidly funny, in all honesty.

• Also, this had a little bit of lore on how portalling works! Thought it would be fun to expand on that and explain on how portalling could be banned in some places (which is actually something brought up in Mask of Power, but expanded here).

• And of course, we have the last instance of the recurring joke that nobody gets Gurglefin’s name right.

• “’Look, Gurglefin.’ Chihiro relaxed her shoulders. ‘I was born in a town where they sold giant fish in the marketplace for two thousand, four hundred yen a pop! That Leviathan is probably nothing!’” – though Chihiro being from Japan is revealed early on, I don’t believe I ever mentioned where she specifically lived. Prior to the big move, Chihiro’s family lived in a small fishing town in Osaka, which meant she saw marketplace fish a lot. Of course, she was a little kid back then so her memories are very exaggerated. Also, the price she mentions got changed in edits to be more accurate to Japanese market prices.

• Chihiro’s happy that her friends let her infodump about her special interest because, well, nobody lets her do that. They usually just make fun of her or ignore her, or get annoyed with her. Having others genuinely get invested in her infodumping is a first for her.

• So why is Chihiro so invested in shipping Marisa and Monika when later installments established that she does not want to be romantically involved in the slightest? Put simply, she doesn’t mind romantic stuff, but doesn’t want it for herself, which is why she gets queasy when she gets in the picture. In addition, within the context of fiction, she just views it as another form of analyzing the stories she loves by expanding on in-story relationships, and thus sees it primarily as a media analysis thing more than anything.

• The marbles that the imp uses were how I explained the imp randomly warping between houses in the original level, which is otherwise not touched upon.

• The pungent panfish line from Kaos is a Machine of Doom reference, where Kaos uses a similar line to get under Gill Grunt’s scales. He takes personal hygiene very seriously.

• Chihiro getting scolded for swearing gave me a bit of a chuckle.

• This chapter also brings Chihiro’s famous “Portal master and guardian of all that is good” introduction, and her first confrontation with Kaos, both of which are big milestones for the story.

• “I wasn't able to get rid of you at Vindlevale, but this time will be quite different!” – the Evil Gillman is referencing the events of the Empire of Ice chapter here, if that wasn’t obvious.

• The Doomsharks healing the heroes for grazing them was another game mechanic implemented in the story.

• The Leviathan getting poisoned by the corrupt magic left behind by the defeated evil minions was a way of explaining away why Kaos gave up the Eternal Water Source so easily. It always struck me as strange that he gave up the Sources so quickly in the original fights since doing so because the Darkness was spreading so he thought he had the upper hand felt a bit flimsy a reason. Here, it’s because he had another trick up his sleep.

• Similarly, the Leviathan purification was another one of my ways of shaking things up with the Eternal Source fights.

Crystal Eye Castle 2-Parter

• In my opinion, this two-parter was the beginning of CHS really coming into its own. It was around the time where I started pushing my prose and taking more liberty with the source material, and gave it more of its own identity outside of yet another retelling.

• The version of the code that Chihiro learns is a heavily-simplified version for basic studies. The actual Skylander Code is much more complex and has many more exceptions, notes, and addendums.

• Cynder, Hex, and Zook doing patrols together is a slight nod to Mask of Power, where Cynder’s focus novel had Hex and Zook as her costars.

• So what did happen to those clams after Chihiro snatched them up, anyways, given that we never see them? I don’t know, maybe they all got scared and left.

• Also realized I got Clam-Tron’s number wrong, whoops! I’m sticking with it though, because I’ve got something planned for it.

• The cyclopes being more friendly, and the Skylanders having to save them was to subvert the always-good/always evil dichotomy the series had going with certain species as a way of making the story seem more grounded. It was also to give more weight to the Skylanders’ victories by giving physical consequences of them winning, and to explain why Ancient’s Peak would have a bridge to their kingdom in spite of them being evil in the game.

• This chapter also brings the return of the cyclops plural debate, lol, plus a new running gag: Wrecking Ball eating things that taste awful and promptly regretting it.

• “Eight. Skylanders must always be diligent, courageous and kind. I think Master Eon got hit with that one a couple times, to be honest.” – when writing this, I imagine that Spyro specifically had Ghost Roaster’s recruitment into the Skylanders’ ranks in mind, given his recruitment circumstances.

• This chapter also has another fic milestone: the beginning of Spyro and Chihiro’s ship name, Magicallegiance!

• The text was supposed to be smaller when cyclopes whisper, but ffnet formatting issues made it regular-sized. Oh well.

• The cyclopes’ names are all eye puns except for Insider, but their name can technically be pronounced with an eye pun as well, so I guess they all were after all?

• The teddy bear that belonged to Eyeantha's son is supposed to be the Teddy Cyclops Legendary Treasure from the original level in Spyro's Adventure.

• Eyeantha talking about her young son’s execution was meant to add more gravity to the situation by bringing up the death of a young child to show nobody would be spared.

• Prism Break and Wrecking Ball were matched up because I wanted to bounce around oldest and youngest dynamics, with Prism Break being an old man and Wrecking Ball a little kid.

• The final riddle that Chihiro solved was mostly just me being goofy, being honest.

• The reference to warp congestion was a nod to Dark Water Cove, where Chihiro brings up the prospect of warp traffic.

• The scenes with Spyro and Chihiro here happened because I wanted to build up their relationship a bit more right before Pirate Seas, which would have the big milestone for their relationship. They’re still some of my favorites to this day.

• Spyro being reminded of home in the cavern is because it reminds him of the Dragon Realms with their magical looks.

• The cyclopes don’t know what Christmas is because Earth holidays aren’t a thing in Skylands.

• I also could not resist having Chihiro’s genre-savviness strike again.

• This chapter also contains the first references to forbidden spells, another one of my personal wordbuilding excursions.

• Fun fact: the second half of this two-parter originally had a content warning for the execution because it was the most graphic thing that happened at that point and I didn’t want people to get caught off-guard. In all honesty, it’s somewhat mild compared to the stuff I’ve done later, I think.

Stonetown

• Dave and Paul, the miners who discovered the Eternal Earth Source in the cold open, were named after Skylanders staff members. Dave is named for David A. Rodriguez, the writer for the VV Skylanders games and the IDW Skylanders comics, while Paul is named for Paul Reiche III, Toys for Bob studio head and the voice actor for the Wilikin men.

• Rumbletown getting namedropped was a nod to Giants.

• Terrafin and Chihiro were a ton of fun for me to write, and not just because he’s one of my faves lol. Him being closer to the kids was inspired by B.A. Barracus from The A-Team, who Terrafin is more-or-less an expy of and who is also noted to be close to and protective of kids. I wanted something to sort of round out Terrafin as a character instead of mainly writing him as a blood knight archetype, and that fit the bill. Not to mention, there was a lot potential for dynamics when the protag is very much so still a kid.

• Terrafin’s fear of flying is referenced from the tie-in books, as mentioned earlier, but he downplays it because he thinks it would hurt his tough guy image if others knew. (Except they all already do.)

• There aren’t any cyclopes in this version of Stonetown because the Skylanders liberated them from Kaos. Continuity!

• I gave Flynn’s balloon a name because why not.

• Technically speaking, the game’s canon states via Rift Into Overdrive that Terrafin cannot swim, but I forgot about that when writing. I considered changing it, but decided against it because A) Terrafin is very heavily Black-coded in canon and “Black people can’t swim” is a very real racist stereotype, so I didn’t want to play into that, and B) it didn’t make sense for him to not know how to swim given that he was a lifeguard before he became a Skylander.

• I also had some fun with Earth stuff in the Titantic reference, since the Skylanders obviously wouldn’t know about the Titanic’s infamous sinking.

• While the other two Earth Element evil minions were original, the Evil Dirt Shark does technically originate from a canon spin-off. The CYOA book Pick Your Portal introduced evil minion counterparts to Spyro and Terrafin, and is the only tie-in material to include evil minions besides the ones shown in the games, as a fun fact.

• During the bit where Dino-Rang talks about missing home, he’s indeed very homesick, but is trying to sort of cover it up. Him on his lonesome looking up at the bird flock is meant to emphasize that.

• Bash pretending to be the Evil Rock Dragon is a personal favorite scene of mine for the comedy.

• During their fight, Bash and the Evil Rock Dragon quote the famous Sonic/Shadow faker speech from Sonic Adventure 02. I’m honestly surprised nobody else has done it, to my knowledge.

• “’I AIN'T A DRAGON, YA BLOKE!’ Dino-Rang exclaimed as he snarled, his fists still clenched tight.” – Dino-Rang’s dislike of being called a dragon is taken from the one of the tie-in books. Can’t remember which one.

• I had to look up so much boxing terminology for Terrafin and the Evil Dirt shark’s boxing match.

• Chihiro conquering her fear of spiders here is partly a way of building up to her exam in the Pirate Seas two-parter.

• The scene where Evil Dirt Shark passes by the others and they take a moment to process it is a Futari wa Precure reference.

• I really like how I wrote the contrast in how Chihiro and the Skylanders act versus the evil minions when they get together for the proper Eternal Source fight. It goes to show how close the heroes are in comparison to the villains.

• I changed the Earth Source creature from a golem to a generic monster because golems are incredibly significant as protectors in the Jewish folklore they originate from, and I’d seen a lot of grievances over them getting watered down to “generic elemental monsters” because of this, so I wanted to change that accordingly. It being the result of corrupt magic infecting the Eternal Earth Source was my way of explaining the otherwise-unexplained transformation.

• The fight with the rock monster had me writing super late to finish it, like, pushing till the nth hour of my writing time and then some.

• The jewel that Chihiro snatched from the treasure horde is definitely relevant later. ;)

General – Dream Casts

• I’ve already gone over some of my personal casting caveats on the dream cast page, but I’ll expand on those a little and note that if a VA got recast for reasons that didn’t involve being kinda shitty or them being dead/retired/otherwise no longer active in VO, I usually tried to give them another role in the story or at least have them as an additional voice.

• In general, I wanted to try and keep my dream casts somewhat plausible, meaning no VAs who are dead, have been shitty in the past (because I don't like them lol, and also to avoid any potential controversy from a practical standpoint), or retired from the industry (barring maybe a few role reprisals since people briefly coming out of retirement for those isn't unheard of), and casting for marginalized characters should be authentic to fit with modern-day casting trends and because authentic casting is important. For the sake of having easy authentic casting and keeping my pools wide, though, I chose not to factor in things like location. Besides, it's the 2020s, we have remote recording, we're not animals.

• A lot of the characters got recast in the foreign dubs, usually because we don’t really know who voiced them in that language’s dub or the game(s) they debuted in never got a dub in that language. Because of that, notable recasts only covers known voice actors who got recast. Similarly, since many of the minor VAs were some of my original considerations for major & supporting characters, only the most notable runner-up picks will be mentioned.

• To single out some dub recasts in particular: Cynder and Hex frequently got recast in dub fancasts because their only known dub VAs were from Academy, where their portrayals are very different compared to their gameverse portrayals. Since their CHS incarnations are modeled after their gameverse ones, I felt the casting wouldn't really fit them.

• For the dubbing languages I chose, I specifically went with every language that the mainline games were translated in or planned to be translated in at one point. Since this is mainline-only, that also means that languages which only got Academy and/or RoH got skipped over. Part of this was to keep things true to the source, other part was for the sake of my sanity.

• For most of the voices, I generally didn’t pick them based on one specific role so much as I picked based on their broader catalog of VO work and common typecasts, with a few exceptions that are mentioned in my notes for the dream casts down below.

• My personal formula for additional voices in English is usually “People who did additional voicework for the original game whose characters didn’t get named appearances + anyone who got recast that’s not shitty and still active in the industry + personal wishlist of VAs I wanted but couldn’t fit anywhere else”, and for the dubs, it’s usually just the last part with a few from the former if I can find them.

• Also, my personal casting notes for anyone who might wanna try their own hand at a CHS dream cast (which I highly encourage BTW):

  • Authentic casting notes (AKA, whenever possible, these casting caveats must be followed when casting these characters):

    • Chihiro, Mamoru, and Anzu should be portrayed by voice actors of (preferably East and/or Indigenous) Asian descent.

    • Double Trouble should be portrayed by a voice actor of Native Pacific Islander descent.

    • Slam Bam and Stealth Elf should be portrayed by voice actors of (preferably East) Asian descent.

    • Terrafin and Zook should be portrayed by Black voice actors. In particular, Zook should preferably be portrayed by a voice actor of Afro-Caribbean descent.

    • Prism Break should be portrayed by a Jewish voice actor.

    • Chihiro, Mamoru, Eyesha, Insider, Eyevan, Trollcey, Tangerine, Merlinus, and Infernus should be portrayed by trans voice actors.

  • Voice Prints & Casting Gags:

    • Canon characters should follow their canon voices as close as possible. Also notably, Spyro and Dark Spyro have separate voice actors, usually people who’ve portrayed the character at different points in the Skylanders series. Generally speaking, Spyro’s should follow Mercer’s take on the character while Dark’s should follow Keaton’s.

    • Wrecking Ball has a bit of a unique casting choice for dubs. In Asian-language dubs (such as Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc), he's portrayed by a woman doing a "cutesy mascot" or "young boy"-type voice, but in Western-language dubs (such as Spanish, Italian, French, etc), he's portrayed by a man with a high and youthful/cartoony-sounding voice, similar to his original English portrayal.

    • Both the canon and original evil minions share their voice actors with their regular Skylander counterparts.

    • Characters whose voices are marked as creature vocals keep their original “English” audio across all dubs. The exception to this is the Evil Life Minion, whose creature vocals are provided by the voice actors for the three evil minions that make it up and thus should be changed to their dub vas in accordance.

    • Chihiro: medium-high range, cheerful and a bit raspy. For an example, see Sarah Willians’ Sayaka Miki or Emi Lo’s Cosette.

    • Mamoru: Cheerful, boyish, medium-high range. For an example, see Veronica Taylor’s Ash Ketchum or Anjali Kunapaneni’s Roy.

    • Anzu: medium-range, motherly.

    • Mabu King: medium-low range, a bit haughty yet silly.

    • K-2 & C-4: medium-range, C-4 is a bit deeper. Casting gag is that they’re typically voiced by pairs of people who have history with the Skylanders franchise.

    • Gary & Larry: medium-low range. Casting gag is that they’re typically voiced by pairs of people who have history with the Skylanders franchise.

    • Joe & Bob: Have the casting gag of being voiced by the most recent voice actors for Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star from Spongebob, respectively, and thus their voices should be modeled after those characters.

    • Pirate Captain: medium-low range, pirate accent. Casting gag is that he’s played by the voice actor of a famous pirate character from pop culture.

    • Hookface: shrill/high-range, pirate accent. Casting gag is that he’s played by the voice actor of a famous pirate character from pop culture.

    • Snarl: medium-range, pirate accent. Casting gag is that he’s played by the voice actor of a famous pirate character from pop culture.

    • Tentaclaw: gruff/low-range, pirate accent. Casting gag is that he’s played by the voice actor of a famous pirate character from pop culture.

    • Cyclops King: Shrill/screechy, and somewhat silly-sounding.

    • Eyesha: Medium-low range, somewhat androgynous and aged.

    • Insider: Medium-range, tomboyish/androgynous.

    • Eyeantha: Medium-range, motherly, aged sound.

    • Eyeair: Medium-low range, boyish.

    • Eyedelle: Medium-high range, cheerful/upbeat/cutesy.

    • Eyevan: Medium-range, androgynous.

    • Eyerene: Medium-high range, cartoony/silly-sounding.

    • Cornelius: High-range, a bit cartoony.

    • Dave & Paul: medium-range. Casting gag is that they’re typically voiced by pairs of people who have history with the Skylanders franchise.

    • Stone Spider Queen: Medium-low range, commandeering with a bit of an intimidating tone.

    • Tree of Life: medium-range, gentle and motherly.

    • Life Seeds: young and childlike. Should be portrayed by child/teen voice actors (typically two boys and a girl) whenever possible.

    • Reapers: Low-deep, very intimidating and almost monstrous. Should have at minimum two VAs.

    • Calliope: medium-range, a bit tomboyish. Casting gag is that she’s voiced by the voice actor of a famous fairy character from pop culture, but this isn’t an obligation.

    • Aura: medium-high range, should be capable of a wide range of ages.

    • Dione: medium-high range, friendly.

    • Mnemosyne: medium-high range and quite aged.

    • Farley: medium-low range with a slight heroic tone.

    • Orson: low-range, very gruff.

    • Raquel: Similar to Farley’s, but a bit higher.

    • Carl: Medium-high range, very shrill and cartoony.

    • Boomington: deep and tough.

    • Troll Scientist: Shrill and cartoonish.

    • Gramps: medium-range, very aged.

    • Trollver: Medium-low range, very gentle and polite.

    • Dyna: Deep and gruff voice.

    • Boomont: High-range, a bit silly.

    • Trollance: Medium-high range, youthful.

    • Boomette: High-range, cartoonish/silly.

    • Atom: Medium-low range, very aged.

    • Trollamor: medium-high range, somewhat youthful.

    • Tangerine: Medium-range, but should generally have a wide vocal range.

    • Syracuse: Medium-low range, somewhat gruff.

    • Fake Mortalannis: Medium-low range, should be capable of sounding both haughty and regal & silly.

    • King Mortalannis: Low-range and very somber and regal.

    • Demeter: Medium-range, somewhat upbeat or heroic.

    • Thalia: Medium-high range, slightly silly/cartoonish.

    • Athena: Medium range, somewhat aged.

    • Holo-Eon: low-range, serious and a bit regal. Generally, he should feasibly sound like a younger version of Master Eon. A personal casting gag is that he's portrayed by Master Eon's voice actor from Skylanders Academy, but this isn't an obligation.

    • Merlinus: High range and a bit pompous.

    • Infernus: Androgynous-to-fem medium-high range, very aged.

    • Lava King: Deep, guttural, and a bit silly.

    • Gold Dragon: Very shrill and a bit intimidating.

    • Fluffy: Guttural creature voice. Should be capable of sounding both monstrous and friendly.

    • Tallmane: High-range to shrill, pompous.

    • Eqiohr: Medium-low range, somewhat gruff/serious.

    • Statue Spirit: Medium-low range, creepy/intimidating but also somewhat sultry.

    • Arkeyan Judges: Low to deep and very tough or self-righteous. Should have at minimum two VAs.

    • Gust Bunny: Original casting gag is that he was voiced by the most recent voice actor for Bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes in all languages, so voice should be modeled after Bugs.

    • Penalty Killer: Deep and tough with an intimidating/spooky sound.

    • Beast Flamer: High-range, very youthful and mischievous.

    • Beast Flamer’s Wolf: Medium-low range, gruff and creaturelike.

    • Additional Voices: Generally go for around 20~ with a good mix of vocal ranges and ages.

English

• Notable recasts:

  • Joey Camen’s roles as Boomer and Terrafin got recast with Eric Bauza and Khary Payton respectively due to Camen having right-wing leanings (and in the case of the latter, because I wanted Terrafin to be portrayed by a Black VA).

  • Michael Ignacio Jr. replaces Alex Ness as the voice of Double Trouble due to Double Trouble being vaguely Native Polynesian-coded while Ness is white.

  • Brent Mukai and Greg Eagles replace Fred Tatasciore as the voices of Slam Bam and Zook, respectively, due to both characters being coded as POC in some form while Tatasciore is white.

  • Jeff Bennett replaces Dwight Schultz as Ignitor due to Schultz being extremely far-right.

  • David Matranga replaces Troy Baker as Sunburn due to Baker being involved with NFTs/cryptocurrency in the past.

  • Eric Hollaway, Ian Sinclair, and Kyle Igneczi replace Keith Silverstein as the voices of Bash, Dino-Rang, and T-Bone respectively due to Silversteine expressing support for Israel in the past.

  • Gregg Berger replaces Peter Lurie as the voice of Prism Break due to Prism Break being ostensibly Jewish-coded while Lurie is not Jewish.

  • Erica Mendez replaces Hope Levy (the person generally speculated to be Quigley’s VA) as Quigley due to Levy being an outspoken Zionist.

• Returning voice actors from the source material (not counting confirmed or speculated role reprisals or duplicates of canon voices like the evil minions):

  • Gregg Berger, the new voice of Prism Break, is the voice of Magna Charge and Slobber Trap in the mainline games.

  • Greg Eagles, the new voice of Zook and one of the voices for the Evil Life Minion, also voiced Aku Aku for his guest appearance in Skylanders Imaginators.

  • Tom Kenny, who voices the Mabu King and Joe, voices Stink Bomb, High Five, Tussle Sprout, Masker Mind, and Shield Shredder in the mainline games.

  • Alex Ness, who voices K-2 & Gary, is a Toys for Bob employee who did a shit-ton of voice work for the original games. He has so many roles that I cannot even count them here.

  • Erol Otus, who voices C-4 & Larry, voiced the Lockmasters Imps and the announcer for the mainline games.

  • Lani Minella, who voices the Drow Witch, is the voice of Sonic Boom in the mainline games.

  • Paul Reiche III, who voices Paul, is a Toys for Bob employee and the voice of the various Wilikin men in Giants and Trap Team.

  • Laura Bailey, who voices the Tree of Life, voices Persephone and Ninjini (and by extension, Ninjini’s Mini counterpart Mini-Jini) in the mainline games.

  • Nolan North, who voices Farley, is the voice of Dune Bug in the mainline games.

  • Patrick Seitz, who voices Orson, is the voice of Hot Head, Rip Tide, Chomp Chest, and Thrillipede in the mainline games.

  • Liam O’Brien, who voices Raquel, is the voice of Luminous in the mainline games.

  • Jamieson Price, who voices Boomington, is the voice of Gulper in the mainline games.

  • Cam Clarke, who voices the troll scientist, is the voice of Blobbers, Mab Lobs, and a number of minor NPCs in the mainline games.

  • Roger Jackson, who voices Atom Trollcoy, provided additional voice work for Spyro’s Adventure and Trap Team.

  • Peter Lurie, who voices Fake Mortalannis/the grave robber, is the second voice of Prism Break in the mainline games.

  • Kat Cressida, who voices Thalia, voiced Scratch in the mainline games.

  • Chris Diamantopoulous, who voices Holo-Eon, is the voice of Master Eon in Skylanders Academy.

  • Keythe Farley, who voices the Lava King, voices Eruptor (and by extension his evil minion and Mini counterparts), Wildfire, the Sleep Dragon, Sheep Creep, and a number of minor NPCs in the mainline games. In addition, he was also one of the games’ voice directors from Giants up till SuperChargers.

  • Matthew Mercer, who voiced Eqiohr Umaex, is the second voice of Spyro in the mainline games, and also did additional voice work for Giants and Trap Team.

  • Travis Willingham, who is one of the voice actors for both the reapers and the Arkeyan judges, voices Eye-Brawl (and by extension his Mini counterpart Eye-Small), Buzz, Doom Stone, Fist Bump, and Fisticuffs in the mainline games.

  • Neil Kaplan, who is the other voice actor for the Arkeyan judges, voices a number of supporting and minor NPCs in the mainline games, most notably Nort and the Arkeyan Weapon Master.

  • Cameron Bowen, who voices Beast Flamer, is the voice of Flare Wolf in the mainline games.

  • Returning VAs from the franchise who appear as additional voices: Audrey Wasilewski (Stealth Elf/Whisper Elf/Evil Elf Ninja, Head Rush), Ben Diskin (Additional voice work for Swap Force), Bruce Lanoil (Additional voice work for Spyro’s Adventure), Bryce Papenbrook (Additional voice work for Trap Team), Cree Summer (Roller Brawl), Fred Tatasciore (Slam Bam/Zook/Warnado, and several trappable villains and NPCs), Jon Olson (Additional voice work for Spyro’s Adventure), Kat Cressida (see above), Keythe Farley (see above), Liam O’Brien (see above), Peter Lurie (see above), Roger Jackson (see above), Travis Willingham (see above), and Yuri Lowenthal (Fright Rider, Softpaw, Trail Blazer, and an Imaginator voice option).

• Other:

  • Since this was the very first dream cast, it was what seriously solidified my attempts at casting and methods. I generally got tied-up in things a lot because I was constantly stuck on what choices I wanted. I wanted to bring back as many people who worked on the original series as possible, but I also wanted to bring in a lot of new talent, and I also wanted to cast a lot of prominent VAs that didn’t get to voice in the series when it was still active… And then I would just get decision paralysis lol.

  • Chihiro’s original voiceclaim for the longest time was Sarah Williams, the voice of Sayaka Miki in Puella Magi Madoka Magica’s English dub, and similarly, Mamoru’s was originally Veronica Taylor, the first voice of Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. However, when overhauling the dream cast, I’d planned to recast them with Asian & trans VAs for the sake of authenticity (which was what I wanted to do back when I solidified the last dream cast in the mid-2010s, but couldn’t because of my lack of knowledge on VO, my hangups on using indie VAs because it felt like an invasion of privacy to me at the time, and the VO scene generally being less diverse then than it is now). This took a while because I had long solidified these two as their voiceclaims and it became an extremely high bar to clear lol.

  • That being said, I did ultimately find fitting voiceclaims (and even preserved the casting gag with Mamoru’s VA, to boot!), but still kept Williams and Taylor as additional voices since they’d been Chihiro and Mamoru’s voiceclaims for so long.

  • Simiar to the above, Yong Yea was my original consideration for Slam Bam's new VA, but I swapped him out for Mukai because I felt that Mukai would be a better voice match for Tatasciore.

  • I also considered having Zeno Robinson as the new voice of Zook based on his performance as Dee Jay in Street Fighter 6, because Eagles largely hasn't done VO work in recent years outside of reprisals so I wasn't sure how realistic a casting choice it would be, and because I thought it would be fun to have Robinson play against his usual typecasts. However, I ultimately felt that his Dee Jay voice was a little too high to be a good voice match for Tatasciore, so I stuck to Eagles.

  • As mentioned above, my personal casting gag for the relevant pirates in the Water Source arc was that they were voiced by people who’d played famous pirate characters in pop culture. More specifically, the pirate captain and Snarl’s VAs are the main voices of Disney’s takes on Captain Hook and Mr. Smee in most animated Peter Pan material, Hookface’s VA is the current English dub voice of Buggy from One Piece, and Tentaclaw’s is the current English dub voice of Roronoa Zoro from the same show.

  • Calliope’s voice actress, Mae Whitman, is famous for (among other roles) being the voice of Tinker Bell in the Disney Fairies movie. I couldn’t resist the joke~

  • David A. Rodriguez, who voices Dave, and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who appears here as an additional voice, both have history with the series despite not playing named characters. Rodriguez is the writer for the Vicarious Visions games and IDW’s Skylanders comics, as well as Dave the character’s namesake. McGlynn, meanwhile, was one of the voice directors for Imaginators.

  • I specifically chose Kellen Goff as the voice actor for the Evil Rock Monster's creature vocals in part because of him being Jewish, since the rock monster was originally a golem, a creature that originates from Jewish folklore. Though I changed its species to be respectful of its cultural origins, as noted in the Stonetown section, I still wanted to keep one nod to its original depiction.

  • Jesse Corti, who voices Gramps Trollfield, and Jesse David Corti, who plays Trollance Trollfield, are father and son in real life, fittingly enough.

  • The voice actresses for Calliope’s mothers, Dione and Mnemosyne, are a couple in real life. The same is true of Trollver and Trollamor’s voice actors.

Japanese

• Notable recasts:

  • Kei Shindo replaces Miyuki Kobori as the voice of Cynder, as I felt that her Academy voice wouldn’t befit her character here.

  • The same is true of Maaya Sakamoto replacing Asami Yoshida as the voice of Hex.

• Returning voice actors from the source material (not counting confirmed or speculated role reprisals or duplicates of canon voices like the evil minions):

  • Kosuke Goto, who voices T-Bone, Mayor LeGrand, and Eqiohr Umaex, voiced Wolfgang, Skull, Malefor, Berserker, and Fire Viper in the Japanese dub of Skylanders Academy.

  • Manabu Ino, who voices K-2 & Gary, is speculated to have been the voice of Spyro in the Japanese dub of Spyro’s Adventure.

  • Masahito Kawanago, who voices C-4 & Larry, voiced Spyro (and by extension Dark Spyro) in the Japanese dub of Skylanders Academy.

  • Soichi Abe, who provides one of the reaper voices, voiced Stump Smash (and by extension the Evil Ent) in the Japanese dub of Spyro’s Adventure and Eruptor in the Japanese dub of Skylanders Academy.

  • Minoru Kawai, who voices Occulous, voiced Pop Fizz and Hugo in the Japanese dub of Skylanders Academy.

  • Returning VAs from the franchise who appear as additional voices: Asami Yoshida (Hex & Flashwing in Academy), Hiroki Goto (Kaos in Academy), Kosuke Goto (see above), Manabu Ino (see above), Mari Kiyohara (Kaossandra & Claire in Academy), Miyuki Kobori (Cynder & Roller Brawl in Academy), Tatsuya Kobayashi (Chef Pepper Jack, Bad Breath, Ka-Boom, Gary, Fisticuffs, & Strykore in Academy)

• Other:

  • For this cast, I specifically prioritized using lesser-known talent, mainly to make it feel like a realistic Japanese dub of a foreign media piece. Most Japanese dubs of foreign media tend to use lesser-known VAs unless it’s a super big-name/big-budget production, so I followed that accordingly for this.

  • Most of the reprisals come from the Japanese dub of Academy, with a few being from Spyro’s Adventure’s Japanese dub.

  • Cali and Cynder’s casting is a reference to a rumored cast list for the Japanese dub of Spyro’s Adventure that often gets tossed around from time to time. While likely inaccurate (it has the wrong VA for Stump Smash, includes VAs for media that never got released in Japan, and has way too many high-profile seiyuu for such a small-scale release), I couldn’t resist tossing them in there anyways. Helps that they can easily fit the characters anyways.

  • Standout choices for roles:

    • Megumi Han was chosen as the voice of Chihiro based on her work as Hime Shirayuki/Cure Princess in Happiness Charge Precure. In a similar vein, Takehito Koyasu was picked to voice Terrafin based on his work as Oresky in the same show.

    • Kappei Yamaguchi was chosen as the voice for Trigger Happy based on his role as Flappy in Futari wa Precure Splash Star.

    • Taisuke Nishimura was picked as the voice of Gill Grunt based on his role as the greengrocer in Kirakira Precure A La Mode.

    • In addition to the rumors about her playing Cynder in SSA’s Japanese dub, Kei Shindo was chosen for Cynder based on her work as Kyoka Jiro in My Hero Academia.

    • Manaka Iwami was picked as the voice of Whirlwind based on her role as Amber in Genshin Impact’s Japanese dub.

    • Shinnosuke Tachibana was chosen as the voice of Drill Sergeant based on his work as Mey Mey in Wonderful Precure. I initially wanted a lesser-known seiyuu named Takehiro Jizodo, but found out that he’d retired from voice acting altogether when I started working on the dream cast, so Tachibana became my runner-up pick.

    • Kenichi Suzumura was picked as the voice of Dark Spyro based on his role as Ryuutaros in Kamen Rider Den-O.

    • Maaya Sakamoto was picked as the voice of Hex based on her role as Tamayo in Demon Slayer.

  • I’m pretty sure this is the only dub that doesn’t do the casting gag of the pirates from the Water Source arc being portrayed by the voice actors of famous pirate characters.

Korean

• Notable recasts:

  • In general, most-all of the Korean dub cast from Academy’s Korean dub get recast here, not necessarily because of any failings on their end but because I already had a detailed Korean dream cast for the series for other things and wanted to put it to use lol.

• Returning voice actors from the source material (not counting confirmed or speculated role reprisals or duplicates of canon voices like the evil minions):

  • Sung-Woong Sa, who voices Arbo and the Mabu King, voiced Fire Viper’s son and several extras in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Dong-Kyun Yu, who voices Gary, voiced Glumshanks, Broccoli Guy, Wind-Up, Crash Bandicoot, the greeble father, and funnily enough, Academy’s Gary in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Jung-Eun Kim, who voices Larry, voiced Wolfgang, Chef Pepper Jack, Chompy Mage (& his puppet), Hugo, Ka-Boom, Food Fight, and Cy in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Yu-Jin Yang, who voices Eyesha and Eyevan, voiced Stealth Elf and Golden Queen in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Chae-Ha Kim, who voices Eyedelle, voiced Claire, Cynder, the baby greeble, and Sprocket in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Jin-Sook Cho, who voices Eyerene, voiced Kaossandra, Dreamcatcher, and the greeble mother in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Seong-Jun Bang, who voices Holo-Eon, voiced Jet-Vac and Pop Fizz (in addition to his ostensible role reprisal in Master Eon) in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • In-Seong Oh, who voices Vathek and Occulous, voiced Kaos, Snap Shot, Bomb Shell, and Fisticuffs in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Hyun Lee, who serves as one of the voices for the Arkeyan judges, was the first voice of Fire Viper and also voiced King Pen in Academy’s Korean dub.

  • Returning VAs from the franchise who appear as additional voices: Chae-Ha Kim (see above), In-Seong Oh (see above), Jin-Sook Cho (see above).

• Other:

  • Though most of the Korean dub VAs were recast, Spyro and Eruptor’s voice actors do at least return from Academy’s Korean dub, plus the ostensible reprisal of Master Eon’s VA voicing Holo-Eon.

  • Yeong-Jae Pyo was my initial pick for Eruptor’s VA, but upon closer inspection of his roles, I found that he was a lot less gravelly than I remembered, hence why I had Eruptor’s Academy VA reprise instead.

  • The pirate captain’s VA is the Korean dub voice of Captain Hook in most animated Peter Pan material, Hookface’s VA is the Korean dub voice of Usopp from One Piece, Snarl’s is Donquixote Doflamingo from the same show, and Tentaclaw’s voiced a number of characters across One Piece as a whole.

Italian

• Returning voice actors from the source material:

  • Claudio Moneta, who voices the Arkeyan Weapons Master & Joe and does one of the voices for the Arkeyan judges, played Thumpback in the Italian dub of the games.

  • Luca Sandri, who voices the Mabu King and Carl, played Kaos and Magna Charge in the Italian dub of the games.

  • Monica Ward, who voices the Drow Witch and Insider, played Golden Queen in the Italian dub of Academy.

  • Pietro Ubaldi, who voices Bob and Snarl, voiced Wham-Shell, Hot Head, and Wash Buckler in the Italian dub of the games.

  • Alessandra Korompay, who voices the Stone Spider Queen, played Kaossandra in the Italian dub of Academy.

  • Stefano Alessandroni, who voices King Mortalannis, played Snap Shot in the Italian dub of Academy.

  • Elisabetta Cesone, who voices Infernus, played Kaossandra in the Italian dub of the games.

  • Returning VAs from the franchise who appear as additional voices: Elda Olivieri (Cali & Whirlwind), Francesco Mei (Game!Eruptor & Gill Grunt), Gianni Quillico (Gurglefin), Luca Sandri (see above), Oliviero Corbetta (Sunburn, Dino-Rang, Ghost Roaster, Camo, Snuckles, Nort & Blobbers), Pietro Ubaldi (see above), Stefano Albertini (Game!Flynn, Warnado, Diggs, & T-Bone).

• Other:

  • Most-all role reprisals are from the games, with the exception of Emiliano Coltorti reprising his role as Dark Spyro from Academy's Italian dub.

  • ISTG between all his role reprisals and evil minion voices I think Oliviero Corbetta ended up with the most voice roles in a dream cast out of anybody here.

  • Obligatory pirate casting cast explaination: the pirate captain’s voice actor, Pietro Ubaldi, has played a number of pirate characters, most notably Monkey D. Garp in One Piece and Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean; Hookface’s voice actor played Buggy and Shanks in One Piece; Snarl’s voice actor portrayed Gol D. Roger in One Piece and I think some other pirates too; and finally, Lorenzo Scattorin played Sanji in One Piece.

  • Calliope’s Italian dub VA, Joy Saltarelli, previously portrayed Tinker Bell in the Italian dubs of the Disney Fairies movies.