LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow - Sleepy Hollow Expanded Universe

 Note: This article contains loads of out-of-universe contents and is the desricption of the writer's own development pattern in the story.

LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow - Sleepy Hollow Expanded Universe is a nickname given to the main setting and world in LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow, LOTM: Star Spangled Crown and its spinoffs, prequels and sequels. It is named due to being a expansion of the original Sleepy Hollow TV series, which was cancelled after four seasons of broacast, leaving many loose ends and story ambiguous.

The storyline's natuure is a Fix Fic served to expand the universe of Sleepy Hollow, and it's named as Sleepy Hollow Expanded Universe out-of-universe. This is also a part of CIS Productions' Multi-Universes and is canoncial to the CIS-verse stories, sharing the same timeline with LOTM: Sword of Kings and its asscociated stories. It also took place on the Prime Earth almost two decades before Sword of Kings Saga AA took place.

Prior to the story of The Corbin Files and Firenza Junior fully entered into the stage, the story followed an old script which told the Witnesses fighting against Tribulations as well as Moloch's malevolent forces, with a little influence from Sword of Kings. However, the script was later revised (yet not completely scrapped) to fill the story with more interesting characters and expansions, in order to tie up the loose storyline in the original series.

For now, the revise of the old scripte was still ongoing.

Part 3 - The Order of Flourish (special case)
Out of all of the sagas in the first story arc, the saga of Harvest Saga has the greatest change. Originally, this is the first saga that is fully original with little reference to the origianl series or other adapations of Washington Irving's novels.

Originally, Harvest Saga is a story about a fight between Sleepy Hollow against a rising Light Elemental Cult, with its members had their own theme of fruits and alliterative namings to make them special.

All of them are contrasting sequel antagonists to the villains before them, being Knight Templars who believe themselves to be good. In spite of this, Ichabod fought against them one by one like a protagonist in a traditional video game. All of their design was originally designed by Officer Candy Apple himself, with finished concept art, until he scrapped them since it took very long.

Among those characters, only Selina Strawberry had her characteristics predominately unchanged, expect in the old concept, she was once a poet who had her works tragically plagiarized and was deformed by her rivals. In spite of this, the old concept still had Selina as the Order's second in command and would make her redeemed, but her personality in the old concept was a flat-out extremist.

The Final Boss in the old concept was Lord Helio, who would be defeated by Team Witnessed and got killed at the very end, not by Ichabod, but the next Saga's main villain, Michael Langdon.

Originally, the story didn't make the Order of Flourish a secret society which ran everything inside Sleepy Hollow, and people like Phyllis Peach and Gregory Grape are only arc villains that had no influence to other stories.

In the old concept, Phyllis Peach and Orlando Orange were just arc villains serving Moloch with flat personalities, acting like the Red Ribbon Army generals and other typical Dragon Ball villains. They were supposed to get killed after their own arc was over, with just a little significance to the whole plot, unlike their new concept conterpart where their significance was way stronger.

However, as the story progressed and the author got influenced by several fictional stories like Tales of Berseria and Kamen Rider Wizard, especially Future Trunks Saga where Goku Black & Zamasu were introduced, he had a change of heart and changed most the Order of Flourish's members into much more complicated characters, with Phyllis Peach as the new main villain. The Seven Deadly Sins are used to describe their personality. They also had more influence in the other arcs and some, like Selina, even acted as frienemy to Ichabod until they finally became friends.

Back for Development - Christine Van Bilj


Sleepy Hollow is a special town, where not everybody stays dead. Ichabod Crane is not the first person who revived in the town of Sleepy Hollow, and he won't be the last. Those characters who will have more roles to go as well as a new personality to develop will return back to the life, with Christine Van Bilj as an example.

After showing her darker persona in Blood Moon Sub Arc, Christine would return with a trace of her original persona, a more sociopathic and mature personality combined with the tendency of her less matured dark persona, Evil Christine. The new script also gave Christine an origin story for the start of her madness, showing that she at least have a decency but was driven into insanity by her father's devilish plans.

Christine's next evolvement of personality, Kristen Kiwifruit, once was presented in the old concept as a false Christine, once named Christine Crane, who lost her aspect of her former self and became brainwashed by Team Witness. In the old concept, Kristen was threatened by her evil self and accepted her false memory, becoming Team Witness' allies. This was similar to Darth Raven in Star Wars Legends.

Nonetheless, in the new concept, Kristen was changed into an avatar of the real Christine herself prior going insane and at least was a caring sister to her brother. As a result of this, after regaining her memory, Kristen still retains her arrogance and open rivalry with Ichabod, but has much more respect on him and admitted he was her worthy opponent and good friend. She also became one with the Order of Flourish after Harvest Saga ' s story had developed.

The process was similar to the infamous Marvel supervillain Carnage in AXIS storyline, where he was brainwashed to become a hero and tried hard to become one, even giving a heroic sacrifice. However, Kristen / Christine redeemed herself and became a hero after accepting her new self, unlike Carnage who reverted back to a psychopath after he was revived. Kristen / Christine redeemed herself not solely due to brainwashing, but because of her genuiue change of heart, happened after realizing how horrible she once was and gave her a Heel Realization. This change in concept was used because the writer wanted to make her change of heart more natural.

After all, the concept of a villain who redeemed via accepting their brainwashed self all of a sudden was mostly controversial and hard to write. Therefore, to make her redemption seemed more natural, Christine's past was added and her infamous fratricide was pinned on her evil persona, who took over the old concept Christine's role as a irredeemable sadist with serious God complex.

Morally Grayish Character - Carl Robinson
In the old concept as well as his formal introduction in The Corbin Files, Carl Robinson was once inspired by Kamijou Touma, the protagonist of A Certain Magical Index story, but inside The Corbin Files, much of his backstory was not revealed aside from him being Duke Firenza's son and almost got killed by the Hidden One.

Carl's adpotive parents, when they were mentioned in the old concept, were killed in some sort of accident, which was considered too similar to the deaths of Iruka Couteau and Haruko Couteau, the adpotive parents of Katarina Couteau and the birth parents of Eugen Katsuragi. Therefore, a retcon was set out of improvise, given to many people considering Carl as unsympathetic after he killed Mary Spencer.

At the middle of Firenza Junior, several flashbacks of Carl (which were all improvised during the process) had Carl being lured into a trap by none other than Mary Spencer herself, while his comrades deserted him and lied about him. It was used to explain Carl's own motive as well as his reason for becoming such a jerk.

Years ago, Carl's foster parents and friends were killed under the manipulation of Nio Hashiri, who made Arzonia Brothers and Langdon Orphans to burn down the town Carl resided for petty retaliations. During the process, Carl accidentally encountered the aforementioned Maria Arzonia, who was forced to kill Carl's foster parents under her brothers' coerce.

This deeply traumatized Carl, who believed that Maria was responsible for taking his family away from him, explaining his resentment towards her and distrust to many. Carl's later trauma drove himself into a Black and White Insanity which never healed, even after he was redeemed from Michael and Moloch's control. Under Langdon Orphans' influence, Carl believed that weak-willed people can't even choose his way to die, an idea shared by Michael Langdon.

Even after cutting off his ties with Langdon Orphans, this still rout deep into Carl's mind which never really faded. Carl's personality as well as experience was partly inspired by Trafalgar Law from One Piece and Stannis Baratheon from the original A Sone of Ice and Fire novels, giving him a more grayish shade on his personality, as the author himself believed it would make Carl unique from Pure of Heart heroes like Maria, Ichabod and Matt. He also showed Jenny Mills' aggresive side and could be considered as her future counterpart.

Overall, Carl was intended to be more vicious than other anti-heroic protagonists from LOTM: Sword of Kings like Azul Jissele and Katarina Couteau, given to his Black and White Insanity, so that he would be distingushed more from traditional hero, especially in the new concept where he even reached the scale of an Anti-Villain. This inspiration was given by the story of A Song of Ice and Fire and its well-known TV series adaptation, Game of Thrones, where many (but not all) of characters are in gray zones and had both villainous side and heroic side to make their personality a lot more interesting.