Auteur and the Homeworld (poem)

Auteur and the Homeworld was a 2022 online story in verse, written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain, featuring the use of the Faction Paradox character Auteur, commercially licensed from his creator Jayce Black.

The story was also an official crossover between the Doctor Who universe and the continuity of The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, on whose official website it was released as part of the series' 2022 Advent Calendar. It served as a sequel to an earlier crossover, Black's own Auteur's Abecedarium.

Summary
When the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' archivist finds and opens Auteur's Abecedarium, the actual Auteur is summoned from the crumbling oxbow timeline he was trapped in to the Cupid Homeworld. Using his powers of shadow and metafiction, he wreaks havoc across the Homeworld while trying to make his way to the hangar were the Crew's Void Ships are kept and steal one to fly it back to the Third Universe. However, he is prevented at the last minute by Herodotus using his symbolic power as an archivist to stamp the Abecedarium as "rejected" from the collection, which breaks Auteur's foothold in the Homeworld and sends him back where he came from.

Plot
For two years now, Auteur's Abecedarium has lain in the Cupid Archives unopened. Eventually, the dark whispers emanating from it attract the attention of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' head archivist, Herodotus-724, who was never told about the book by Bibliophile-962 and thus guilelessly opens it. As soon as he opens it and reads it aloud, Auteur himself is summoned to the Homeworld from the "crumbling little oxbow" in which he'd been imprisoned.

After monologuing awhile about his circumstances, during which he is amused to note that he appears to be in a rhyming story for once, Auteur declares his intention to steal one of the Crew's Void Ships to return to his home universe. He snaps his fingers and seems to have disappeared until Herodotus realises that the stranger has transferred himself into Herodotus's own shadow. Attacked by the Clockwork Sphinx, he jumps into its shadow, and then, making his way out of of the archive building, into that of another, passing Cupid.

Hopping from shadow to shadow, he makes his way unseen; the only Cupid to notice their shadow having temporarily sprouted a skull is Larrikin-1029, who is predictably enthused instead of alarmed. However, when Auteur drops by the post office in Philatel-426's shadow, he is noticed by Lord Thymon, who reaches out and grabs him out from the shadow-space. Thymon recognises him as one of the "parasites who hail from Third" and claims to be something much greater than them, being an actual Embodiment of Time, but Auteur dismisses Thymon as having lost his metaphysical power when he became a part of the Cupids' story, and now being nothing more than "comic relief". He knocks Thymon's hat off his head and takes advantage of the distraction to run out of the post office, headed for the hangar where the Fog Ships are kept.

Thymon sounds the alarm, but the Cupids' arrows are useless against Auteur in his shadow-form, and Sigma-063's efforts to lock the Fog Ship hangar from the inside are useless when Auteur jumps into Sigma's own shadow and unlocks one of the doors. Thinking quickly, Sigma runs to the building's maintenance rooms and switches on all the lights, making shadows vanish and forcing Auteur to adopt his normal three-dimensional shape again. He briefly tries summoning all the shadows from the Homeworld to overwhelm the lights, but is unsuccessful.

Instead, as his final throw of the dice, he writes a set of glyphs and interlocking circles which cause all the fiction contained in the Cupid Archives to come to life, inspired by Herodotus's earlier mistaken assumption that Auteur was a fictional character come to life from within the Abecedarium. As all the stories' essences are released from the book, pandemonium ensues, with the Cupids merging with an endless carnival of fictional characters. However, before Auteur can leave aboard the last unaltered Fog Ship, Herodotus realises that he can use Auteur's spell for his own ends by stamping the Abecedarium with his official "REJECTED from collection" stamp. As this, too, is realised in three dimensions, Auteur himself is expelled from the Cupid Homeworld to match, sent back to his oxbow.

As the Homeworld is restored to its normal self, Herodotus chains up the Abecedarium and locks it in a drawer, hopefully for good. Celebration-665 invites everyone for cake.

Characters

 * Auteur
 * Herodotus-724
 * Bibliophile-962
 * Clockwork Sphinx
 * Philatel-426
 * Thymon
 * Sigma-063/Merlin
 * Marksmanship-522/Paddington Bear
 * Dandy-432/White Rabbit
 * Juliet-178/Robin Hood/Little Red Riding Hood
 * The Hound/Big Bad Wolf
 * Foreman-964/The Nome King
 * Colonel-028/Tik-Tok
 * Pythagoras-858/King Arthur
 * Pessimist-242
 * Mr Toad
 * "Long John Copper"
 * Frankenstein-818/Dracula
 * Tracker-764/Ahab
 * Conspiracy-1263
 * Celebration-665

Worldbuilding

 * Auteur offers three French titles for his people: "Architectes", "les Horlogers" and "bijoutiers mystérieux". He refers to their planet as the Morning Star. Thymon, an actual embodiment of time itself, is dismissive of their claim of being "lords of time": "to enslave is not the same as to embody. (…) You built a dam upon your stream - I forged a sea entire."
 * Among the flurry of fiction come to life, the Clockwork Sphinx merges with the sphinx who menaced Thebes, and Tracker-764 briefly finds Aladdin's lamp.

Continuity

 * Two years ago, Auteur left a cursed book in the Cupid Homeworld, but it was placed by Bibliophile-962 in the Cupid Archives before anyone could read it. (PROSE: Auteur's Abecedarium)
 * Auteur is now trapped in an oxbow reality. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author)
 * Auteur describes Thymon as a "jumped-up swimmer". (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, Spinning Jenny, etc.)