VOLUME ONE

First things first: the series is named ALTENARIA because I googled "pomegranate diseases" in a 3am fever-haze of trying to fit in the whole Vortigaunts Were Fucked Over By The Nihilanth thing into the actual fic (which, sad I couldn't) and found this website, and I was like "ooh altenaria that sounds cool" so I googled that + pomegranates and found this and now we have the fic title for the longest fucking thing I've ever written in my life. seriously. cannot believe how many words this is, it genuinely blows my mind that y'all stuck with me this far.

Team (and Team's NCE which was teams nice, and I did have an explanation for that acronym somewhere but fuck if I remember it anymore) was my way of shoving Team Fortress 2 in here. yeah, we've also got Mann Co. as a hard times/the onion type deal, but this was the best way I could think of to squint at the act 4 opening and go. no. I need a clearer way of putting Gordon into tf2.

the highly anxious mayor (and the interns cowering but unfazed at the frequently-attacked city hall) was a nod to Cinead's stellar we didn't even kiss until issue 26, which y'all should read because holy fuck. jesus shit. cannot emphasize enough how much I love Cinaed's worldbuilding. also, the mad genius three states over who was attempting to use this unnamed New Mexican city as a pawn was, obviously, Reservoir a.k.a. Breen. gave him water powers instead of mind control because I thought it would be funny if every other flashback villain was some form of mindfuckery and this guy just smacks people around with The Wet.

Ms. McLain is GLadOS, thanks to her VA Ellen McLain! her nemesis is Chell, who can teleport between places, but more frequently portals between dimensions for her research into How Can I Build The Single Most Fucked Up Equipment Set Up Possible. Advance is Alyx, duh, and her superpower is intuitive combat strategizing (which is one of those things that, actually, a decent amount of people in superhero universes have and just never clock it because barring something going Very Wrong, or like, a flashier secondary power that means you throw on the tights. uh. I mean not a lot of people end up in enough serious combat situations to notice "man it's actually super easy to think through every consequence of every action in this pitched battle. weird.") and gravity manipulation a la Alex Power from Power Pack.

forzen's on a student visa from canada. motherfucker's quebecois. normally I wouldn't do this to him but here's the one 'verse I have where it checks out, so he's here on a student visa and can't legally work, but luckily, Team doesn't give a singular fuck about legality so he's getting paid under the table.

freeman's "avoid putting any forks in sockets" was a joke about joshua's favorite game.

domer aka doom homer is. I mean it's homer, what do you want from me. uh, the summoner, wyatt vissien, was a knock on wayne's "brother" wyatt from the amazon dark stream, with vissien being a soundalike on (radio tele)vision.

you know her, you love her, the little white bird is bibi.

NOTES

so for footnote number three, diOtev was meant to evoke the di- or de- prefix a lot of surnames have, but due to it being so short, it just looks weird. it's also obviously Wayne Ray diOtev specifically because of this piece of fanart from otheror, because that method of splitting up the name made me laugh so hard. adiot. awesome. also in footnote number six josh mentions an old comic writer named Gar. it's gubgar. wayne gave me so many fucking names to throw around, I love it.

VOLUME TWO

the construction site being lambasted with sweet voice at an ungodly hour was inspired by the most popular comment on this video because. look we've all seen it and we've all snort-laughed. I had to pay it homage.

Ratmann is from portal, just like, blatantly.

the "stong ate a seal at the aquarium" bit wasn't actually inspired by this art by ratbesat, the art only got posted 2 months ago and I'd already planned it out by then, however! look at it anyway.

the car lot fight was partially inspired by gmod fucking-about, and partially inspired by this specific enemy from mike spaghoner's break screen.

stong gets bisected specifically because of benrey's first death, the one with the door, which is why there's the in-text "it was their stomach" and ribs-and-josh text of "penas" "THEY DID NOT SLAM THEIR PENIS IN THE CAR DOOR."

the scientist who also works as a teams nice grunt isn't named, but I want y'all to picture corporal V.

the combine/striders marching to city hall absolutely fucking up the boxing gym's wall is because of this post.

darnold's concern over the gman being out on his own was less because he's old and alone and much much more because "Hey You're Kind Of A Superhero Is This Cool?? Villains Aren't Gonna Break This Guy's Door Down???"

sunkist is a cybermutt because darnold says the cybernetics department got shut down after their ill-fated cybermutt project.

sunkist's "purple evening no hard feelings" was directly from "when it's purple, like the evening, of a spring evening. then it means he's O.K."

the raccoon family is being controlled by the nihilanth, and they're raccoons because of saintsaint's Invasive Species which, holy shit, read it if you haven't. and then read everything else saintsaint has written. lose your mind with me.

the humans that the nihilanth compels to fall into the mass of rebuilding matter are sgt. j. son who, thanks to baaulp's news of the future video, we know is Loose. gotta catch that kid. can't have him out there.

the other human taken is isabel "izzy" ackal, who's the offscreen wife of my post.players au OC, Dr. DeMaya Ackal. hope this helps. i'm not linking you to post.players.

NOTES

footnote number five is a reference to this post

VOLUME THREE

darnold leaving raw chicken under the sink wasn't a reference to anything, this was me calling out my ex-roommate who left chicken drumsticks in the freezer for literally a year past their expiration date. yes I ate them. yes I would do it again. no I did not get food poisoning, and yes I thank god every day of my life.

rico & cube are canon. plum is a friend of joshua's. faucet is dead on impact.

teams nice specifically giving out PowerGloves to their tech support is a cyberkidz joke.

aperture's IT department is staffed entirely by half life npcs. all of the main resistance npcs are working to uncover breen/reservoir's shit. truly the heroes in their own set of comics.

the "potential rush-hour cover identity" being in the all-stars baseball team is a nod to holly's saltybase streams, of which I am a huge fan. bet on boby.

tommy absolutely Blasting his apartment with strawberry smell is (blatantly) taken from neon's really fucking good fic, which you should read. Thee blueprint.

stong's messed-up speech has several elements to it, duh. there's the obvious bits that I took right from benrey's boss monologue, plus j son's "darkness forecast" (still news of the future) and mrs. ackal's need to get her daughter MD up for school. speaking of MD, go read daisy, daisy. it's where I got the name and also like, 78% of my brainrot. foundational.

NOTES

socpens bellinghausen being the body-horror artist was honestly just funny to me. scorpy made the chronicles of benrey, so he's the artist. the main reason i picked him over holly is because despite holly's incredible artistic skills, of which we are all aware, bellinghausen is easier to pass off as a name than hollowtones. anyway, holly is also an artist for hlvrsp, make no mistake. how else would we get bibi?