Uncovering Lost Wiki Treasures Pt 3 - Candi vs Candi

In the late 2000s, there was some confusion by webcomic afficionados about the Candi Flippo-Levens featuring in Ciem. Namely, suspicion that she was somehow based on the titular Candi from Starline Hodge's work. However, in spite superficial similarities, the two Candis were not at all the same, nor inspired by one another. A whole wiki article was created specifically to outline this issue.

Creator comparisons and contrasts

• Both creators were born in Florida in 1983, and came up with their respective protagonists around 2004-2005. While neither inspired the other, the two did discover one another's work in 2007.
• However, one was born in Miami in January, while the other was born in Ft. Myers in March.
• Both have lived in Florida. However, Starline has been Floridian her entire life. The Dozerfleet founder also lived in Wisconsin for a few years, and in Michigan for about 30 years.
• Starline is right-handed, the other left-handed.
• While both Candis are college-age protagonists, Starline kept her work's scope to (mostly) probable situations, with a few exceptions involving squirrels. The scenarios in Ciem are more frequently fantastical than most of Starline's work would allow for, since that work was specifically intended to showcase that The Sims 2 could be used to make superhero productions with quasi-original characters, and do a modest job.

Levens vs. Jane

• Ciem opens with Candi Flippo at age 19, preparing to turn 20. Starline's Candi strip opened with an 18-year-old protagonist.
• Candi Flippo's two love interests were Denny Levens and Donte McArthur. Candi Jane's were Alex and Jon. But while Candi Flippo marries Denny, and later marries Donte after Denny is murdered by Musaran, Starline at the time stated she had no interest in Candi and Jon ever officially hooking up.
• Both Denny and Alex were brown-haired men who either had medical degrees or were in pursuit of one. Denny was also selfless, while Alex was selfish to extremes.
• Denny Levens also took seriously his "till death do you part" vow with Candi, and Musaran unfortunately made sure it played out that way. Alex never made his Candi any such promise, and then was quick to betray her.
• Candi Flippo grew to be between 5'5" and 5'7" in Classic Gerosha, while her Cataclysmic Gerosha version maxes out in height at 5'4". Starline's Candi is stated to be 5'6".
• Candi Flippo acquires a friend named Laurie Pegol, based on a real woman named Liz. The other Candi has a friend name Laura, at one point.
• Candi Flippo dyes her hair firetruck red, while the other Candi allegedly has "natural" pink hair.
• Candi Flippo battles pyromaniacs, including Don the Psycho. The other one was threatened with fire by a random psycho.
• When initially given a pregnancy scare, Candi Flippo quickly grows to want a child. Unfortunately, she miscarries. The other Candi is relieved to not be pregnant, due to having no interest in children. But while Candi Flippo-Levens half expected to get pregnant due to unprotected sex with her husband, the other Candi turned out to just be lactose-intolerant.
• The time periods were different. Classic Gerosha sets the events for Candi's life in 2019 in the opening, and then progresses to her life in 2025. The first season of Candi takes place in 2006, when Candi Flippo would've been about 7 years old! Candi Flippo being born in 1999, coincidentally, is one thing that didn't change when the Earth-G5 and Earth-G6 timelines gave way to the Earth-G7 timeline. Therefore, Candi is between 9 and 10 years of age during the events in Blood Over Water, even if the original miniseries doesn't feature her on screen in any form.
• Candi Flippo-Levens in Classic Gerosha is shown attending Viron University, which is supposed to be the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, though its geography and architecture are merged with Ferris State. Starline's Candi unabashedly attends the University of Florida.
• Candi Flippo inherits a lot of money from her parents, but tries to hide how rich she is. The other Candi is portrayed as perpetually broke.
• Candi Flippo-Levens needs money and a job only to pretend to be normal, and hide the fact that she's Ciem. The other Candi is portrayed as simply a jobless loser.
• Candi Flippo-Levens is portrayed as a non-denominational Christian with liturgical leanings, while Starline's character is described as non-practicing Jewish.
• Candi Levens has an entire gallery of rogues, plus a race of evil aliens that believe she's some prophecied destroyer that they must kill before she kills them. Starline's Candi...just has bad friends.
• The two Candis even differ in their attitudes on alcohol. The one at Dozerfleet averts bars and rarely enjoys alcohol. Ironically, beer is served at the bowling alley where she does find work. She also later becomes a server at an upscale bar temporarily, and avoids college dive bars. The Starline version has been drunk before, by admission.
• Erin Flippo ingrains her Candi with an overwhelming sense of responsibility in life, as Ciem and as Candi, and even suggests that having no powers and not being Ciem would make no difference. Candi agonizes over this. By contrast, the only responsibility that Starline's Candi took seriously in early issues was her class homework.
• Both experience the loss of a lover. In Dozerfleet, Candi's loss is due to a homicidal maniac in a shrew costume, with her home then being destroyed by a suicide bomber. Starline's Candi merely loses her man to ego conflicts and treacherous friends.
• Starline's Candi has a notorious sweet tooth. By contrast, Candi Flippo appears to be indifferent towards candy.
• Candi Flippo wants to go into forensic investigation and criminal profiling, while Starline's Candi is a digital artist - like Starline herself.
• Neither Candi is particularly good at other languages besides English, though Starline's Candi having no ability to speak Spanish at all leads to her being taunted over it. Candi Levens learns just enough Spanish to get Latin Town to cooperate with her.
• Starline's Candi has done many things; but never worn an orange centipede costume to battle an alien invasion, fight crime, nor stop monsters. She does have a flying pet ferret named Menjou. The nearest equivalent to that in Dozerfleet would be Ferreto, the Everywhere Ferret Cop of Ferretsville, in the Dromedeverse. Earth-G5 Candi and Dromedeverse Ferreto, suffice to say, have never met. Menjou and Ferreto would probably not get along.
• When it comes to men, Candi Levens looks for character attributes and beliefs compatible with her own. Starline's Candi seems to be more shallow, concerned with genital sizes. The Dozerfleet Candi wants a man who shares her life mission, and can help her maintain her masquerade. Starline's Candi is more prone to exploitation by men that just want her for the bedroom benefits.
• Both Candis have a tan, but that tan implies different things. Candi Flippo-Levens is Indo-Persian Mulatto in Earth-G5, and this description has carried over into latter incarnations. Starline's Candi, by contrast, is "Jewish-Dutch-Caribbean."
• Differing art styles also convey a difference in artist agenda. Earth-G5 Candi was initially created in The Sims 2. This was to showcase to the Sims community that Sims storytelling can tell more complex stories and mythologies, and shouldn't be used merely to make knockoffs of Teen Mom. The other Candi was hand-drawn, by an artist wishing to showcase how "American-Japanese fusion" can be a good art style.
• The two Candis have very different family dynamics too. Candi Levens has a large family with its own complex mythology. Starline's Candi rarely has anything to do with her parents whatsoever.
• Candi Flippo-Levens has higher sexual mores than Candi Jane. While the former does have a very voracious sexual appetite, she's willing to keep herself chaste until in an at least somewhat-monogamous relationship, if not outright married. She doesn't aspire to one night stands. Even with Donte, Candi waits until they're practically engaged before finally succumbing to temptation. With Denny, she was able to save herself for marriage. By contrast, Candi Jane borders on being a "femcel," frustrated that no one will have sex with her, and not particularly bothered by what relationship she has with said man before said encounter. While Earth-G7 Candi isn't quite as morally upright as Earth-G5 Candi, she retains her emphasis on serial monogamy; turning down offers from Warren Bozil and Jack Mercreek in spite having lust for them. She is adamant about keeping herself only to the man she's dating / married to at that moment, whether it be Danny Loffin, Tyrone Menster, or Donte McArthur. She entertains a crush on Paul Driveway, but it never leads to them doing anything inappropriate. Candi Jane...cannot be guaranteed to have such modesty.
• In Earth-G5, contraceptives actually interfere with Candi's centipede powers, as they use hormones to trick the body into thinking it's already pregnant. Later incarnations do away with pregnancy completely stealing powers away; but Candi Flippo generally doesn't believe in them, in any incarnation of the character. Candi Jane claims to have "always been safe," implying she uses them almost religiously.
• Candi was touched by Denny putting her before himself, but only bonded with him the way she did based on having been previously misled into believing that Donte was dead. The shock at learning he was live, stripped of his powers, given cancer, and being held prisoner by the enemy after they faked his death to fool the world, and being saved for some epic public execution reveal later, shakes Candi almost to her core. By contrast, Candi Jane's more shallow criteria for men ensures that even if Alex were an ax murderer, she would have fallen for him.

Uncovering Lost Wiki Treasures Pt 2 - The Leibniz-Newton Effect

This old article may no longer serve much purpose on the current Dozerfleet Database, but "The Liebniz-Newton Effect" was a way to attempt to explain an observation made at Dozerfleet that has since been commented on numerous times by other scholars: the Theory of Multiple Discovery.

The old article named itself after the mutual publication of discoveries in calculus by Gottfried Liebniz and Isaac Newton, leading to the two at one point suspecting that they'd stolen each other's ideas. Hollywood has observed this trend occur quite often, as studios race to capitalize and out-do each other while cashing in on various trends as they come and go, resulting in the "twin films" phenomenon.

John DeBruyn, who was at one point the administrator of Blue Moon Inn Online and who was initially selected to play Prince Volkonir for the since-canceled 2008 film Volkonir, once complained that he had been working for many years on a TV show concept for an alternate history world littered with Asian mysticism themes. However, the release in 2003 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, with very similar themes, dashed his hopes that his own premise would ever be taken seriously.

The old article also noted that Tail Sting and Snakes on a Plane both appear to have been adaptations of the original script Venom, not to be confused with the similarly-titled-but-otherwise-unrelated 2018 Sony Marvel film.

Armageddon and Deep Impact were also cited as examples of the phenomenon, as were Antz and A Bug's Life. It's debatable if March of the Penguins and Surf's Up had anything to do with each other. Yet, their rush to capitalize on the sudden popularity of penguins also led to Madagascar, and Happy Feet coming out around the same time. Before this, The Pebble and the Penguin and VeggieTales: The Toy That Saved Christmas also featured penguins heavily.

The issue has been muddied, as accusations of theft and plagairism abound in the debates over many works with eerie similarities. This is made worse by cases of actual theft. Infamously, The Wild was subjected to sabotage and espionage, leading to Dreamworks hearing of its premise and then rushing to release Madagascar to film first. By the time Disney had The Wild ready for release, confused filmgoers accused The Wild of being a knockoff of Madagascar, when it was the other way around.

Dozerfleet works also ran into multiple discovery issues:

• Around the same time that the Classic Gerosha continuity was running, production on Ciem bumped into issues with having some superficial similarities between its protagonist, Candi Flippo-Levens, and the titular Candi in artist Starline Hodge's Candi webcomic strip, popular at the time.
• Liquidon Ethereteel from Stationery Voyagers was originally going to be called "Liquilight," until the discovery of Liqui-Lights brand pens. While he was designed after a Gilette Liquid Paper whiteout pen, naming himself after a different company's trademark was a bridge too far.
• Neone Delft of Stationery Voyagers was originally going to be called "Neoni," until another creator's trademarked anime character was discovered to already bear that name.
• Karen Mindoche of the Trapezoid Kids bears a lot of superficial similarities to the Karen Sympathy from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, in spite being created long before Dozerfleet's founder was even aware of the plot of that movie.
• Gordon Lomken from Stationery Voyagers was a staunch defender of Creationism and had virtually all the answers. So someone killed him. He was originally inspired by the character of Chandra Suresh from Heroes, but bears a lot in common with the character of Thomas Whitfield in Australian author Julie Cave's novel Deadly Disclosures. Until 2012, Miss Cave and the Dozerfleet founder had not had any contact or even awareness of each other.

Uncovering lost wiki treasures Pt 1 - Pencil Town

It's debatable if the Dozerfleet Databse can justify returning some of the content on Miraheze that it used to host on Fandom. However, some items deserve an honorable mention somewhere; and today's example here is just one of possibly more to come.

Before its cancellation, Stationery Voyagers was trying to be many things, and look for comparisons. A snooty professor in 2002 once claimed it wouldn't work, because no one would back a show where the main characters were living pens and pencils. That no TV show or movie could ever exist around such a premise.

However, that didn't stop other shows from existing around anthropomorphic inanimate objects. While Stationery Voyagers was a lot more like Heroes in space with gel pens and markers than it was like VeggieTales, it still begged comparison to one little short film that was produced around 2008, that made its way to the 2009 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

A brainchild of the Walsh family, that film was dubbed Pencil Town.

Directed by Josh Walsh, this 14-minute short film was released by what at the time was known as Last Act Studios, not to be confused with the current Last Act Studio entity of today. While the fate of the Walsh family's Last Act Studios remains unknown, it was a thing in 2008 when their short was first released. Copies of Pencil Town may now be hard to come by. That being said, Josh himself appears to be faring quite well. He partnered in 2011 with the Erwin Brothers, and went on to produce works such as October Baby and Jesus Revolution.

It was produced by Josh's relatives Patrick and Cathy Walsh, with the most credited voice actor being Caleb Walsh. At the festival, the family claimed an estimated budget of $5,000 went into the short's prdocution. It was released direct-to-DVD in 2008, and became a semi-finalist feature at the 2009 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

The plot was fairly simple and straightforward, and the animation style was very much like that of classic VeggieTales episodes of the late 1990s:

A town that is run and operated by various stationery beings and classroom objects finds itself at the mercy of a gang of chalk sticks. An overconfident pencil named Plus is the favorite officer of the Pencil Police Department, which seeks to put an end to the Chalky Chan Gang. Plus arrogantly sends himself alone into combat to confront the town's adversaries, and is quickly captured. His unassuming partner Minus must set things right before Plus meets his demise.

While it was clear that Stationery Voyagers was stylistically and genre-wise a very different animal from Pencil Town, there was some confusion of the two. On Monday, November 16th of 2009, around 7:25 PM EST, Roguewarrior1978 on the Dozerfleet Forum on Proboards asked if the two works were directly related or not. Of course, they weren't, and weren't even inspired by each other. However, Pencil Town was given mention on the wiki back then, as a proof of concept that the old professor at Lansing Community College was wrong.

Stationery Voyagers was intended to be a very melancholy serial drama riddled with real world social commentary, about space diplomats whose mission went horribly awry after they get hijacked by Earth politicians, and later have to deal with a satanic death cult whose members were humanoid bobcats, and who were gathering weaponry to destroy all of existence. This was after also trying to deal with the complexities of two other planets at war with each other, with the fate of their own in the balance, and the fate of Mantith (Earth) soon to be also in the balance. Where a band of devil-worshiping pirates had conquered one world, and another was an empire nearly at war with itself.

The mood, size, scope, and everything of Stationery Voyagers was leaps and bounds above and beyond anything Pencil Town was, or had ever set out to accomplish. After its cancellation, the creative energy that went into it began to be funneled instead into making The Gerosha Chronicles a worthy spiritual successor - with the angelogy of the fomer even being 90% directly imported into the latter!

Of note: the angels Levío and Cherinob were first introduced in Stationery Voyagers, before being imported into Gerosha canon. This went for the SV world interpretations of Michael, Gabriel, Maurice, Filforth, Cavalore, and Dolondri as well. Rickrod, sidekick to the Devil himself, was also originally given that name in SV canon. While Belay, Astrinah, Kritchobol, Riptchokal, and most of the other Biroots mentioned by name are Gerosha original names, the majority of prominent members of the Angelic Army were SV-envisioned first, with the notable exception of Soetera.

Stationery Voyagers also holds distinction for featuring mosquatlons as a creature in some of its season 3 subplots. This type of vampire is notable for being based more on mosquitoes than bats, even if the mosquatlons that featured in season 3 would have been brazen parodies / knockoffs of the vampires in the Underworld and Twilight films. (Though, Fredreick Powderkov was intended to be a parody of Napoleon Dynamite.)

In its heyday, the series even went so far as to predict 2020s woke insanity, nearly 20 years ahead of schedule! When the Voyagers arrive on Mantith with stories to tell, they are immediately surrounded by atheist activists, desperate to hear a narrative that will put an end to faith in God. Instead, the Voyagers speak of a creator, and of said creator assuming the form of a man named Minshus, who sacrificed himself for all the worlds. The atheists panic, and go ballistic.

But even when the Voyagers get a reprieve from most of the world after the Drismabons begin causing chaos across the six worlds, one particular group simply cannot stop obsessing over harassing them: the Crooked Rainbow. Woke activists obsessed with LGBTQPIZON politics, the Crooked Rainbow goes out of its way to find where the Voyagers were relocated to, and vandalizes their apartment just to send a message: "Promote our sexuality, or we will destroy you!" They even kidnap Oceanoe in "Choice After All," and poison him in an effort to turn him gay (it doesn't work.) Coincidentally, the most vandalized article on the wiki was the one about that very episode.

Pencil Town was nowhere near that level of ambitious. While complex moral debates, black vs. white vs. gray, etc. were moral themes in SV, Josh's film had a very basic pride-befor-a-fall narrative structure and moral framework.

The two works also took radically different approaches toward anthropomorphism. Pencil Town gave its characters large cartoon eyes, and arms. Stationery Voyagers developed an entire mythology around "phantomars," and periscope-like vision in the visor-caps characters wore, which essentially made them faceless, yet still able to bend their bodies to a limited degree, as well as tilt and lean at different camera angels to react to stimuli in the environment. Voice work would have further filled in the gaps, providing emotional conveyance by exploiting excitation transfer theory.

Neither Stationery Voyagers nor Pencil Town first pioneered stationery beings and the use of stationery anthropomorphism. The "Theater of Things" sketch on the Muppet Show episode "Sex and Violence" from March 19th of 1975 is arguably the world's first true example, pre-dating the earliest sketches for Stationery Voyagers by a full 25 years, and pre-dating Pencil Town by 33 years. Clearly, that old LCC professor was not a fan of Jim Henson.

Path of the Ming-Cho has gone AI

With the wiki back online, and most articles reverted to where they were before the db141 crash, other news has it that the process for things moving forward got some good news. Path of the Ming-Cho is now scheduled to be a free-release short story, one that will be sparsely illustrated with AI renders.

Not using up as many Sims resources means that after the completion of Corando's "Don't Lose Hope", the remaining five comics can be finished in a more timely manner. Path will then be easier to complete, granting plenty of time for two more AI showcase videos - plus time to initiate the for-profit novels, and time for Dozerfleet Studios to branch into freelance projects, possibly for A-Line Services in Florida.

As a result, its catalog entry has been relocated from the Comics shop to the Literature shop. Details will be released as more information is available.

Good news, bad news

Good news

Corando work is back on track.

Also, Miraheze should be ready with the restored wiki fairly soon, as in, in a week.

Bad news

SlimWiki isn't going to allow mass public access of pages for backup wiki purposes. However, it can be used to reverse-engineer about pages on the blog, to function as a mini-wiki, for big enough projects. Which projects qualify for this treatment has yet to be determined.

Trolls on Reddit that don't want the brand to exist in any form are also being dealt with. This may take a while.

More wiki news

Miraheze has recovered several lost portions of the Dozerfleet Database, and is working to add them back in. When they are added, changes made since will then be also added. Some articles will be reverted to pre-crash information, such as Candi's article. Also, Mahima's article will be reverted, to allow for her father's original name to be restored.

SlimWiki will still be used as a backup for projects, however. Each project's Miraheze article, upon completion and publication, should get a SlimWiki article entry as well.

There is also some consideration of restoring the old blog Wilinski Forest, as a go-to for discussing topical current events issues and where Dozerfleet stands on each. Many of these will involve links to news stories on other sites or videos, often with commentary. That blog isn't expected to be as popular as the main; but it will definitely prevent story loss from occurring, as has happened before.

Changes to Tumblr, plus lack of popularity on Tumblr, led to Wilinski Forest being defuncted on that site. But as current events continue to affect the world Dozerfleet must operate in, keeping stories straight about topics not immediately related to Dozerfleet projects is still a priority. Topics in the news that directly affect Dozerfleet operations may still get mentioned on the main blog here, or on the Labs blog. But Wilinski Forest would cover those that don't affect either directly.

New wiki solutions

If you see the above icon next to a project's Database icon, that means that a very simplified version of the project's data has been copied over to the emergency backup Dozerfleet Database on SlimWiki.

Under ideal circumstances, the Miraheze version will be able to show you everything you could possibly ever want to know about a project's history, and then some. But if for whatever reason Miraheze is down; projects will still have the option to have a SlimWiki version of their articles provided.