Alternates In Arms Au - Blog Posts

I've been going a LITTLE bit insane over @psiioniicarts Alternates in Arms AU so I did a fanart :3

I hope it's good! I did my best with the hands

In AiA, does Mark ever find out that Cesar is an alternate? If he does, how does he react? Does he accept the knowledge (possibly after freaking out) and live with it or does he lose his mind/sanity and do something drastic?

There is one time he finds out about Cesar’s true nature, but his memory of that night is damaged and he doesn’t remember finding out. Alt Cesar manages to lie to him for several years longer about it, and Mark is none the wiser. After all, an alternate wouldn’t save his life, would he?

…

…would he?

I gotta say, I’m falling in love with your Alternates in Arms AU. The idea of alternates taking the place of humans, and ending up enjoying taking their place, and befriending their friends, and living their lives, is very interesting.

Thank you! It probably stems from the deeper desire in me to believe the human spirit can triumph over alternates but really I’m just a sucker for “the inhuman desires to be human”.

Can an alternate long for friendship? At least in this AU, yes…and maybe he could have it too.

Oh my god, I just realised how TINY Mark is in that shot where he's holding Gabriel's and Dave's hand - he is only capable of holding Gabriel's FINGER! He's so cute!

Yeah 🥺 with the heights that I decided on for them, I realized Mark's tiny little arm would barely be able to reach up and hold Gabriel's hand, so he just had to hold onto one finger

What a mismatched little family they are

Why is alt!Cesar and Mark's friendship so wholesome?

Real!Cesar & Mark's is like the standard teenage boys' where they shit on each other, while alt!Cesar's over here threatening other alters who get a bit too close to his claimed and bagging to his (homophobic) coworker about his amazing roommate/friend

Human Cesar and Mark indeed had a friendship like any other pair of teen boys. Perhaps the ribbing was. A little too hard from Cesar at times, but Mark’s never had friends before, so he can’t blame him for not quite keeping up with the blows.

As for alt!Cesar…

…Perhaps he merely became exactly the kind of friend Mark needed.

Does it matter?

(textless vers. below)

“If she hates the coffee so bad, why does she keep coming back? If she lives I might kill her myself to have one less pain in the ass.”

— (1st pic) —

G: Sir, this is a coffee shop.

— (2nd pic) —

G: Favorite? Ha, funny. I’m not fickle enough to have “favorites.”

(A/N: It’s caramel mocha with extra whipped cream and added chocolate drizzle.)

— (3rd pic) —

G: Yes, yes, I’ll get to you, thank you…

G: Of course they know I’m also St. Gabriel’s pastor. Little hard to blend in when you look like this, and unlike the others I can’t just change this face like you’d change your clothes.

G: And look. I don’t care how people are spending their money here as long as I’m getting paid.

G: If someone wants the liquid equivalent of a bullet to the heart, then fine. You bought it, I make it, the end.

— (4th pic) —

S: Uh, Gabriel…we got another complaint from that 14 espresso shot lady. She’s blaming us for ending up in the ER again-

G: GOOD. I hope that witch dies this time.

Thanks so much for keeping the Mandela fandom alive <3

I want to ask though, did Gabriel put a claim on Dave at any point? Because it seems that although Dave left the church, Gabriel still misses him

Dave still visits in a way, though he doesn't appear at mass. Gabriel merely acts like he doesn't know who's on the other side of the booth.

And did Gabriel put a claim on Dave? Well, he'd tell you no...but he'd be a liar.

OMG YOU FUCKING REPLIED TO MY ASK HRFIJFGHVRGFRTIJU

dude, I fucking love your AiA AU (and just your Madela Catalogue content in general) and I'm obsessed with it right now. I love the way you draw them all, how you write Gabriel (he's so silly!!!/), and I need to know if the other characters play a part in this AU

Like, does the BPS team still exist? did Sarah still create it, or is she and BPS just a bunch of teenagers hanging out together and causing chaos (though I'm pretty sure that Adam is still a baby in this AU so the other probably are). What about Ruth and Thatcher? Do they play a part, or are they all just kind of side characters in the AU?

I'm also currently drawing my ocs if they were in your AU cause god damn is it fun

anyway, thank you for reading, continue with your Mandela Drawings, I love them and so do many other people, and continue to being the silly goober you are <333

Yes, BPS still exists! Only, it stands for Bythorne Private Sleuths (formerly BAS, or Bythorne Amateur Sleuths), and instead of just specifically paranormal investigations, they are more like nonprofessional private eyes for hire at cheaper prices. I haven't ironed out their story quite yet, but as I vagued about in this post after September 1992, the Heathcliff family was told Mark is "a missing person, likely deceased" by police. Sarah grew up believing Mark went missing and probably died, and she worked out that it probably had to do with an alternate infiltrating his life by posing as someone he cared about. Her motivations and goal for starting BPS then are to discover ways to weed out alternate imposters.

I don't have a design for Sarah (or Evelin, who is a part of BPS in this AU) yet, but I do have a small doodle I did of AiA Jonah and Adam:

Still working out a definitive story for them too, but in this AU, Jonah's a former teenage delinquent, now an adult street rat delinquent (though...technically all of BPS are delinquents, but I digress). His personality is mostly the same, laid back and sarcastic, but he's good to his friends. Adam is...strange, like the type to stare unblinking at you. He still sounds mean sometimes, but he's generally slightly nicer than in canon. Most of the time, he's just incredibly blunt, always saying exactly what's on his mind, even if it's harsh. He's also younger than Jonah by two years, but there's a reason for that (that won't be relevant until later).

Jonah met Sarah first in high school, and the two formed a bond, with him later joining BPS first. Afterwards, Sarah brings Adam on after meeting him outside of school, and Jonah grows close to him pretty quickly. He doesn't know why, but Adam reminds him of a childhood friend he used to be close with...

Ruth and Thatcher are also in this AU, and generally play the same roles they do in canon. I haven't put too much thought into them, other than that Thatcher is close with Dave, and he was involved in Mark's case as well as Adam's.

Did you give Gabriel a part time job as a way to punish him or was that just a quick idea? I find it so funny lol cus imagine his greatest fear is just working as a barista again (or does it motivate him to destroy humans?)

Pretty much LMAO. I dunno if I mentioned it before, but most of the time alternates own their own businesses, which employ other alternates, since that's easiest for them to keep their cover. In this post, I mentioned Gabriel owns and operates a small coffee cafe called Paradise Brew because, surprise, the church needs money to run, and there aren't enough donations coming in because it's individually funded. But not many people attend church anymore due to the severely decreased population in Mandela, and generally people are losing faith. Which is all totally Gabriel's fault due to the alternate surge in the 1990s, but he didn't really think that far, did he??

So now, he suffers through people's atrocious drink orders and their nasty attitudes. It's not...the worst, there are SOME nice people, as he vagues about in this comic. But no, surely, all of humanity deserves to be destroyed.

...Yes, surely. Every last one...

can I give cesar a book of alcoholic drink recipes or does he already know most of them.. -N (not the alternate just the initial)

(if you recognise me heh.. nuh uh)

“Oh, he knows plenty of cocktail recipes just fine—he inherited it from the previous owner. That’s not the problem.”

“It’s getting him to shut up long enough to get any work done.”

“I’ll take the book though. Might more useful than someone around here.“