The Lore

(from the Q&A from earlier)

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There isn't much visual information about her available yet due to the existing tablet being too slow and finicky to use. As soon as we get a new tablet we'll be sure to draw the actual character sheets for the band members. For now, here are some commonly asked questions about the lore!

 

Q: What is the TML?

 

A: The Technical Musicians League is the very league that every musician dreams of entering because it gives participants the only chance to play sets in the largest arenas and stages to compete for the largest amounts of prizes. It's kind of like the CDL or the NBA except it's instruments.

 

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Q: Is Sketch's real name Fuyuka Matsumura?

 

A: No. She has six first names and six last names but V really is her name and her primary last name really is laCroix.

 

Her real name is V Sevenspike Celeste Nelephry Yumi Hyerim Moon-Shichigawa-Schwarz-Beaulieu-laCroix-Cassidy I. No, she is a pure European. She doesn't even have any Latino blood either. She also goes by "Verity" or "Vivace".

 

She was mistaken for someone by the name of Fuyuka by the Matsumura family, only because her younger twin sister was reincarnated as the oldest daughter Hanami and the laCroix family did have minor ties with the Matsumura family even before then. However, because Sketch picked up the legendary doomsday axe when she was ten, she managed not to die for 15,000+ years, unlike Hanami, who passed away some time while Sketch was separated from the rest of the laCroix family (the reincarnation process allows Hanami to still remember all events prior to her previous deaths; she even helped Sketch escape from the Matsumura family).

 

Aside from this, she was raised in other parts of Tokyo for a time by her one of her aunts' Shichigawa family. She often sneaks to visit the Shichigawa family and has a room dedicated to her backup equipment there. However, this was only possible because her said aunt married a Japanese man. The said aunt is a famous ice cream parlour owner [and manager, with the said parlour operating in Japan.]

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Despite having uploaded various videos and posts debunking all affiliation with any Japanese mercenary clans, the Matsumura family and various other mercenary clans are still trying to hunt her down to this day.

 

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Q: Can Sketch end up losing the doomsday axe at some point?

 

A: The legendary doomsday axe literally makes the owner the new deity of death, and it can be disarmed in three ways.

 

The first way is that the owner discards the axe willingly. Many deities found the weapon to be too much power for them to handle and it had driven them mad, so they did eventually forsake it. This isn't a problem for Sketch, however, as by discovering that there are strings installed across the weapon she discovered a way to not only keep herself alive but fully bend the weapon's power to her will, so if she ends up losing ownership, that won't be the reason why. She pretty much uses the axe just like another guitar and she doesn't have much other concern aside from maintaining the said power just as some kind of insurance policy, so the weapon is virtually free to do whatever it wants as long as it's there whenever she needs it.

 

The second way is that the owner gets hit by a disarming curse, which is only possible if the deity wasn't really that powerful to begin with. This isn't a problem for Sketch either as unbeknownst to her she already happens to be one of the Elder Gods of Destruction, which means she was already one of the gods before she picked it up. She also gained ownership of the White Ring and the Black Ring which control the Queen of Light and Queen of Darkness respectively, which makes her all the more immune to the disarming curse. However, there are only three beings that can cast the disarming curse, all three of them being underlings to one particular demon lord that Sketch has a vendetta against, so she is pretty much the last hope of keeping the axe from the demon lord and preventing the entire world from eternal slavery. This is why some of the people who tried to force-recruit her into their little crusade ultimately decided to let her keep going down her path of being the eternal rockstar. By holding onto the axe she's doing everyone a favour by keeping it from the wrong hands. She doesn't even have any real agenda concerning it, she just wants to be a rockstar (and that means both queens are also free to do virtually whatever they wished as long as they come back whenever Sketch needs them).

 

The third way is the only actual way Sketch can lose ownership of the axe. Unlike the other gods that gained ownership of the axe in which they just couldn't die, for Sketch, respawns are real. That means she can technically "die" but all that the doctors have to do is mend her back up and use the defibrillator to bring her back to life (this is why she accumulates more and more stitches as time goes on). There is just one problem with this. If doctors can't put her back together, she can't be revived, so if she ends up spewing into a million pieces, that's game over. The chances of this is still rather high due to her unfathomably bad luck.

 

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Q: Does the legendary doomsday weapon have a name?

 

A: Lilith. She is also the female spirit that lives inside the axe. The queen-genies of the rings also have names. Karin for the White Ring, Emily for the Black Ring. In dialogues Sketch refers to them by these names a lot, and even in the actual story and material they will all be referred to by their names to keep the protagonist's serious yet oblivious nature.

 

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Q: Why is a naval officer living with her as a common law partner? Isn't she trying to avoid marrying him?

 

A: Sketch was avoiding marriage in general, and she really did try to marry her bandmate Sophie while disguised as "non-binary", only as a means to make sure she doesn't end up in the same predicaments she wound up in when she was younger. That said, she never had any animosity toward Captain Patrick Cassidy, it's just that neither of them were aware that there was an arranged marriage planned for the two of them and they would never know until way after the fact. At first she's bitter over the fact that she did wind up carrying his biological daughters, but one, he doesn't even like it in the navy (he's only there just because both his parents are traditionalist admirals), and two, most her daughters did opt to join her band as soon as they first met, the daughters knowing fully well that Sketch is a returning veteran rockstar. This would eventually lead to Patrick and Sketch marrying each other anyway, due to the unconditional love and support from the whole family, hence the Cassidy name. Sketch in particular would even go as far as build stronger armour and weapons for her husband's men, and the same would go to two other naval officers she would eventually befriend.

 

As for why Sketch is even allowed to build her own weapons and fleets of aerial warships, Sketch has "protected" status in France due to various militaries and mercenaries trying to abduct or kill her, but the European militaries themselves don't have the resources or skills to build the weapons and ships that she can, so the government allowed her the exclusive civilian right to bear arms.

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Q: Why are the band members not allowed to have sex or drink/smoke/vape?

 

A: It's not so much that Sketch is intolerant to those things as much as she had suffered a lot of trauma regarding sex and the aforementioned substances. Half her family were heavy smokers and drinkers and they've pretty much thrown their lives down the drain, while the other half, including herself, wound up unfathomably unlucky and ended up as either rape victims or wrongfully convicted over a felony charge due to being disabled. Sketch happens to be one of the few who suffered both rape incidents and wrongful convictions, but she does happen to be the unluckiest in the laCroix family, having suffered much more of those things simply because of bad luck vs everyone else combined.

 

Fun fact: Sketch's late mother was the one happy-go-lucky lady who didn't have to suffer any of the laCroix curse and became a stage manager that focused on "putting on a show" and "delivering a performance" which was one of the major factors that led to the corruption in the music industry, and this is why she resents her mother so much. Her mother didn't have to go through anything, while she herself wound up going through the worst of the worst.

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Q: Why can't the band members have tattoos?

 

A: Sketch never said anything about tattoos. In fact, she does have a barely-noticeable tattoo of a pair of blue dice depicting box cars on her right arm just below the shoulder. She also has a dagger design on the dorsal side of her right hand. Due to her shapeshifting capabilities she can also be seen with a tribal tattoo across her forearm occasionally. It resembles a geometrically-perfect blue star (with black outlines) and a long black wing with thin feathers protruding from it, very much like the ones often seen in biker decals that are meant to resemble a coat of arms.

 

As for why other band members don't have a tattoo yet, that's simply coincidence. Sketch has no plans to rule out the idea of allowing a bandmate to have tattoos. She is even open-minded about face tattoos.

 

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Q: What is a "technician"? Why does Sketch resent natural entertainers so badly? Why is she strongly against people using stage effects?

 

A: The Technician vs Performer dynamic is the very main focus of the lore.

 

You have the Performer type players who just do everything naturally and they're more focused on putting on a show and entertaining people and doing things just for fun. Most modern acts in the TML fall into this category, which is ironic for a "technical" musicians league, which further drives a chip on Sketch's shoulder.

 

And then you have the Technician type players who are the polar opposite. Their craft is their lifeblood. They've put in years and years of commitment and hard work into what they do. They may not enjoy it (they don't enjoy it at all), but they have no plan B as they are inept at everything else but they are really exceptionally skilled at the one thing they do.

 

If we were to put this on a scale, we have the Performer-Technician scale, with the pure Performer being 0 and pure Technician being 14.

 

Most characters in the lore fall somewhere between 1 and 4 while most of Sketch's bandmates fall closer to the middle. There are some bands and their respective characters that fall closer to 8 or 9 and they would be considered the "normal" Technicians.

 

Due to Sketch's unique circumstances she is known for her unconventional warfare (i.e. unconventional and unique ways of doing things), but she still goes about them in a very calculated and intellectual manner, making her a hard 14, albeit a different breed of a Technician but still a Technician nonetheless.

 

The major problem she sees with the way things are is that most of the labels tend to celebrate putting on a spectacle above pure musicianship and skill, and what she has a strong distaste of regarding this is that only those who won the genetic lottery and were born with "good" looks and "good charisma" ever get a chance to take the large stages, and even then, the labels tend to favour an insider's son over someone with the actual qualities they look for.

 

Sketch sees technical skill as the great equaliser. It allows anyone with enough research and hard work to stand a fighting chance. It allows the regular people the chance to become a true rockstar and provide a much more powerful experience with none of the tricks or fakery. This is why she is often seen lamenting over the "good old days" because they really were the good old days where you had to be exceptionally skilled just to be let in the door to the industry. She also loathes the fact that all of the years and years of music theory teachings from the classical eras were long since forgotten and she has the toughest task of all: to reinstate the importance of technical skill and reteach the lost lessons on music theory. She is fully convinced that if one is really skilled at one's instrument, one would never need stage effects or any other form of trickery.

 

Sketch is far older than she actually appears because she picked up Lilith at the age of ten which led her to only age in intelligence since then. She is actually a legendary veteran who wound up locked in prison for over 31 years just because someone decided to throw a ton of money at a bogus case just because they hate her, and she just began rehabilitating to catch up on everything she missed while she was away and return to the field as the last guardian of music theory.

 

Another important part of the lore is that this "delivering a spectacle" way of doing things (and subsequently focusing on the performance aspect rather than the actual proficiency and skill on the instruments) and using visual effects for the stage sets are actually against the regulations. The admins and judges simply have grown less and less discerning and let pretty much everyone else get away with murder... except for Sketch. She was pretty much singled out but the actual reason why she's bitter is the fact that she is the only one ever that keeps to the integrity of the TML.

 

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Q: What does Sketch look like?

 

A: Her natural hair is a dark blue, just like her mother, but what makes Sketch stand apart from the rest of the characters in general is that she would always dye her hair a bright teal and never cut or tie her hair which means she would just put it all down and keep it long. That is, if you don't count the obvious... the fact that she looks just like one of the Thrasher-type zombies if you don't count the hair and the bluish skin, blue inside of mouth, and blue blood. She also has no lips and her mouth is very small. She has large prosthetic eyes that can change into any colour. She has no nose.

 

A Thrasher-type zombie is known for having long dark hair and massive claws her fingers have grown into. They are known to be only clad in the remains of a tattered white tank top and panties and not wearing any shoes. Because Sketch also has massive fingers that look like they have grown into Thrasher claws, she is often mistaken for a Thrasher-type zombie. She is actually an amalgam of at least 31 different species along with her human self; one of the said species just happens to be a shapeshifter and that's why you don't see the features of the other species.

 

The massive claw-like fingers that Sketch has is both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. Such fingers make Sketch require guitars with at least nine strings that are custom made but when she does obtain the instrument she needs, she is very agile and proficient on the fretboard.

 

She is often seen wearing either her band uniform or player jerseys of esports teams she owns, all of which are blue, or black with blue accents; but she is never seen wearing anything casual. She can also often be seen wearing formal attire which will always be black with blue accents. She is often mistaken for a villain due to all the black she wears.

 

The major difference between Thrashers and Sketch is that Sketch managed to escape the facility she wound up in very quickly and thus she never came in contact with the virus. While Thrashers did end up with hands that grew into large claws, Sketch was just born with large claw-like hands. Due to this important difference, Sketch is simply mistaken for a zombie but was never a zombie to begin with.

 

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Q: Why does Sketch hate sushi/Japan?

 

A: She never said anything about hating sushi or anything Japanese. She just dislikes it when she, her band, or her bandmates get mislabelled as Japanese. She seems very stoic and always-angry on the surface but in actuality, she's trying to tiptoe around everyone's perception of what the "real" V laCroix is because she has a very legitimate concern of being replaced by an impersonator one day, and this had happened before, which makes her all the more alert at all times. Not even her bandmates know this (only the most dedicated fans do) but her favourite is the Eel. She also loves the Masuzushi.

 

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Q: Why does Sketch speak in a British accent if she's French? Her bandmates don't have a French accent let alone a British accent...

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A: Back when Sketch was still a big name neoclassical shredder she travelled between France and UK a ton. It got to the point where she would go as far as attend a British high school when she attended high school for the first time (obviously she would end up forced to go to high school over and over again for different unlucky reasons despite having already gotten her D. Tech, D.M.A., Ph.D. in culinary, and D. Chem much earlier). She also occasionally speaks in Scottish and Irish accents.

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Another note about Sketch is that she only seems like a cold-hearted stoic ice queen on the surface, but that is all only a front. In actuality, she is suffering from severe cases of chronic PTSD and has trust issues due to all of the horrors she saw and suffered for millennia on end. Through her 15,000+ years of existence, all she ever knew was pain, discrimination, and an endless streak of bad luck.

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Now here are some of the terms that come up frequently (more terms will be explained here as soon as time allows).

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Blackpitch Chateau - The Blackpitch Chateau was once a prestigious castle floating just above the middle of Paris and was owned by Sketch's ancestors. When a fascist regime had overrun the democratic government for a time, however, it ultimately became the world's largest prison, and the crimes against humanity committed there by the guards would make the World War II concentration camps look like a Montessori in comparison (the things they were doing were much worse than murder). As soon as the regime fell the castle was abandoned, but it didn't take long for Sketch to muster what little money she had to buy the castle back and restore the ownership to her bloodline. This prison enclosure is now Sketch's current home and she uses the skills she had learned from the years to make do with the remains of what her ancestors had built. She had done an impressive job at restoring most of the castle, but the ghosts of both her ancestors and the innocent people that were killed (or wound up in worse fates such as being injected substances that caused satanic abominations break out of their hosts' bodies Broodling-style) in the castle still haunt the area. Sketch, to this day, still tries to cope with the fact that she lives in a permanently haunted castle, even though neither her band and her label (that she owns) nor her other companies (again, that she owns) even celebrate Halloween. The electricity bill she pays to make the haunted castle more tolerable is insane. The operating rooms where the aforementioned dark deeds were done still exist in the castle, and it happens to be the place where Sketch would eventually bite the bullet and have her doctors draw the necessary blood from her to not only get the new DNA-activated locks working but also use the rest for the zombie vaccines (Sketch's elder god blood provides immunity), but thanks to this, she eventually overcomes one of her major traumas and her little confidence gained would visibly show. Blackpitch Chateau also refers to one of the esports teams that Sketch actually owns, and was named after the very castle that she bought back. She also happens to play on that said team as captain, just like the other teams she owns.

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Blackstripe Squadron - This band released their debut album in 1985. Until this band happened, Sketch wound up in various metal bands while held at gunpoint as either rhythm guitarist or bass player, even though Sketch had released several solo albums before then and had a number of instructional videotapes to her name. Blackstripe Squadron was the first band in which Sketch would actually be an official founding member. She would be the bandleader and one of the two lead guitarists, but around then she was only 15 at the time and wasn't at legal smoking or drinking age. This was yet another reason why bandmates, future or otherwise, couldn't smoke or drink when she was around. That said, just when they were about to play their first song at the first venue of their first headlining tour, the entire band wound up killed by terrorists with only Sketch having managed to come back from the dead.

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After Sketch discovered how she can use mana crystals to revive her old friends and family, first thing she did was revive the members of Blackstripe Squadron to pick up from where she left off. However, Magdalene, the other lead guitarist, ate some shotgun rounds during that disaster and was unable to be revived, which prompted the rest of the band to have Black Roses guitarist Kaya, whom Sketch is a new mentor of, to fill the vacated spot.

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Dakka - The word "dakka" simply refers to machine guns. Although light machine guns can technically count as dakka, they usually refer to heavy machine guns that are typically mounted. Sketch happens to own an unmounted heavy machine gun and uses a special harness that allows her to operate it without a mount and while moving on foot, and thanks to her immense strength despite not having a bulky physique (she is capable of pulling an entire ferry overseas and making it faster than the ferry can move on its own), her mobility is unaffected. This, however, doesn't come up very often.

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Dreadaggoth - A Dreadaggoth is a cursed weapon that is capable of killing gods and providing the owner with other immense powers. Dreadaggoths are different from other weapons in that they are bound to whoever initially picks them up unless the owner is hit by a Disarming Curse or gives up the ownership themselves. Lilith is the most powerful Dreadaggoth known to all gods, but other Dreadaggoths do exist.

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Dregs (or The Dregs) - The "dregs" is Sketch's way of referring to the syncopated palm mutes playing along to a half-timed drum beat that made the pseudo-genre of "djent" famous.

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Fau'gurhas - A Fau'gurhas, or "gurhas" as it's commonly referred, is the most advanced class of aircraft carriers that hover mid-air and can travel across the planet at very fast speeds, as well as house over 6,000 fighter jets. The very first two Fau'gurhapodes (plural form) are Sketch's flagships Horizon and Freya, each of which she hand-crafted herself within a week with identical schematics and specifications (the only difference is the paint job). She is also known for crafting her husband's flagship Nerthus and Captain Jack Price's flagship Skadi, both of which were crafted with identical schematics and specifications as the Horizon and Freya.

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Fvijafolizen Kingdom/City - The Fvijafolizen are the northern nation of people within the Elven Commonwealth that live on a floating platform just above the Arctic Ocean next to several European countries. They are known for having darker skin than other elves that is much more resistant to the cold winds than that of their normal counterparts. Fvijafolizen City happens to be the Kingdom's capital. The late King Alunoth V was Sketch's father that passed away, but his mother still happened to be alive and also in power (the nation itself is a polyarchy that works almost like a revolving door). Sketch can't revive people she hasn't killed, at least not on her own anyway. In order for Sketch to revive people she hasn't killed, it costs a couple mana crystals to do so. Sketch's witch friends would help her find a dig site to get the two mana crystals she needs (she would wear thick gloves when handling them) only to discover that the very elven king she helped Lilith revive is actually her dad. Alunoth V is a half-dragon, with his father being a blue dragon. Sketch would eventually join her father and grandmother as a queen in her own right (Queen Nelephry I). Unlike the 30 queens from the past, however, her immense intellect, crafting skills, and vast knowledge in warfare history made her a beyond-capable queen, albeit more of a chessmaster with an unintentionally goofy streak.

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FvJ (or "France vs Japan" or "the FvJ line") - This term comes up many times within Sketch's fanbase. Sketch really dislikes when One Minute Winter is misidentified as a Japanese band, mostly because only two of the members are officially Japanese and literally everyone else has French citizenship. However, Sketch and co wound up having to temporarily relocate to Japan due to sudden wildfires that would erupt. France would later wind up contested between the original government and another new fascist regime on the rise, making the move inevitably permanent. Due to the new fascist regime poised to take full control of France, Sketch is rather ashamed of being French and the band being French and is struggling to decide whether she prefers to identify herself and crew as French or Japanese.

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Goetinic Lord(s) - These beings are evil elder gods that corrupt and manipulate human minds and control the said humans into submission, forcing them to either turn on their own brethren or spread unspeakable plagues. These elder gods have been around long before the titans or any god came to existence, whether it be in real mythologies or works of fiction. While they are evil abominations in nature much like the ones "created" at the Blackpitch prison, a typical Goetinic Lord is far more powerful than the most powerful demon lords. They are also capable of shapeshifting and they are impossible to kill without a specific special weapon, making them masters of deception. A faction of Goetinic Lords, however, discovered more concepts and intellect through interacting with humans and rebelled against their incorrigible compatriots, leading the former to seek refuge with the said humans, and that's how Sketch's family came to be, at least her mother's side anyway. Ritubyaulh is Sketch's "Goetinic Lord" name, although she is unaware that she is a Goetinic Lord that owns the only weapon that is capable of killing a Goetinic Lord (other gods can still be killed with another Dreadaggoth.

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Blackpitch Goetinic Lords refer to the very family tree that Sketch's mother was from. Half of Sketch's Goetinic ancestors are still alive, but they are evenly divided on Sketch's decision to buy back the Blackpitch Chateau. Half of them approve of her decision while the others, while willing to go along with it, are visibly disturbed by having to see the remains again.

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Leader Discrepancy - Official sources credit V "Sketch" laCroix as the official bandleader and the bandmates attest, but her status is disputed in external sources. Even then, Sketch is too timid and considerate for a bandleader that she has very little influence on the direction of the band aside from the compositional material.

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Niner (or 9er) - Sketch likes to call nine-string guitars "niners" (written as "9ers") so that she can save time getting her points across because she likes to talk about them a lot. Likewise, she refers to 10-string guitars as "tenners" (written as "10ers"). Guitars with fewer strings don't receive this distinction.

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Paris Niners Holdings Club - This is the holdings company that Sketch puts all of her companies and brands under to help her digest all of her duties better, with the "Niner" in this case having the same definition as the "Niner" as explained above.

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Paris Niners are her franchise team in a particular esports title and its respective annual league.

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Blue Vivace Platters is the record label that she owns and runs.

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Skillish Spades Resorts is the company that owns a large number of casinos in Europe (most people are unaware of Sketch's involvement)

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Lumentonomy Gaming is the esports organisation that deals with the non-franchise esports titles. Its sister company, Lumentonomy Eatery, are a collection of the restaurants she works at as the owner-chef. Some of the restaurants have Bellegranate stars (They are stars awarded to the most top-tier restaurants similar to another form of stars owned by a tire brand we can't name for copyright reasons.) Lumentonomy, unlike the other companies, started out as a mid-tier team that was on the verge of having to play a relegation match due to having lost their star player last minute and Sketch, at the time, was forced into various teams as a substitute after her own organisation wound up expropriated without compensation and was constantly threatened with permanent bans from esports altogether. Sketch already happened to have a Lumentonomy jersey that an old college classmate sent her for her birthday so she appeared at their HQ wearing the jersey and bought a stake in the org. She also joined the struggling squad and saved them from relegation.

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Skillprec Guitars actually has an interesting story. Sketch spent about 10 years studying music theory in South Korea and while she was there, she worked at a guitar factory to get by. Having built up the worldwide presence years later, she managed to get her own guitar brand going with the same factory. What makes Skillprec's guitars different is that Sketch assembles the guitars herself, which is the same job she undertook back then for regular production guitars.

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Nanashugi Crew were a multi-channel network and record label founded by the band Nanashugi and their high school. Years later after Sketch finally received some of the money she had been owed the whole time, Sketch managed to acquire the Nanashugi Crew into the Holdings Club. However, she had no intent to put the Nanashugi Crew programmes out of the market. Instead, her intent was to have the creative directors from the programmes help some of her own bands (most notably Echo 8) with its brand identity and new sense of direction. Most of her bands had technical skill primarily in mind, but with Blackstripe Squadron back in the fold and One Minute Winter still playing the skill-intensive compositions, the need for this singular objective started to fade, prompting Sketch to have the creative directors help her in rebranding the other bands.

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Rose and Mint was one of Sketch's earlier bands, consisting of Rosaline "Rose" Sorbillo, and Sketch, who was nicknamed "Mint" at the time. Much like virtually all of Sketch's bands, this band never worked anywhere outside France. Rose and Mint was a two-piece instrumental only technical synth-rock band with EDM and neoclassical metal elements, with Rose handling the bass and the drum machine, and Mint handling the guitar and the automated synthesizers for the lead parts.

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While Rose and Mint were doing their work solely in France, Nanashugi Crew decided to file a bogus trademark infringement claim as an attempt to rob Sorbillo and laCroix of their rights to the band. Even though Sorbillo and laCroix were successful in proving both French and Japanese juries that the other Rose and Mint never existed in the first place, and even the French judge ruled in their favour, the Japanese judge pulled all of the strings and their sentences were still pronounced, much to the outrage from both juries and the French judge.

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V "Sketch" laCroix, despite having never committed any crimes herself (at least not willingly anyway), is very well-known for being extremely unlucky when it comes to court cases. There was only one court case of hers where the judge did not overrule the jury's verdict (in all her cases the juries ruled in her favour unanimously), but even then, the one court case that went favourably for her would wind up nullified by other circumstances. The bad luck is further worsened by the fact that virtually everyone has some form of irrational vendetta against her, either due to their own corporate greed or the slanders that stemmed from the others' corporate greed. This is not helped by the fact that the left-wing party of France wins unanimously every election but anyone that is not from the opposing right-wing party ends up killed by hired snipers immediately after, thus forcing an all-conservative parliament every time, forcing a massive bleed on Sketch's earnings through nonsensical discriminatory tax rates. This was not the only time Sketch wound up shafted of her intellectual properties either. it has been an ongoing pattern.

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When Sketch's complaints regarding the discriminatory taxation practices went unanswered for more than half her lifetime, the rest of the European Union had to intervene and finally lower the tax rates for her, giving her more than the world's GDP in credit from overpaid taxes. Even receiving 20% of it was enough money for her to not only repurchase all of her lost franchises and start a new guitar brand but also buy out Nanashugi Crew and still have enough money to handle other matters. However, Sketch's intent regarding Nanashugi Crew was not to take the existing programmes out of production, but after discovering that her mother that was believed to had been dead was one of the creative directors the whole time, was to have the creative directors help out in rebranding some of Sketch's existing bands (originally all of them had technical skill in mind, but with Blackstripe Squadron back in the fold and One Minute Winter still doing the technical skill things, the other bands' needs to cater to the technical skill agenda faded away).

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"We have lethal" - Usually Sketch's outlook toward anything is rather bleak and she sees most situations as beyond all hope. However, Sketch, being the intellectual type, can sometimes notice the needle's eye that allows her to see some possibilities that she otherwise is unable to. If she suddenly gasps and loudly says to everyone "we have lethal" or "we have game," it means she discovered that the tall order at hand is actually doable.

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"Zerg Juice" (or "Nyergies") - You don't hear these terms outside Sketch's inner circle of friends, but it's her "jargon" for energy drinks.