Fanfic co-written by SilverGryphon8 (also known as Obi's Second Cousin or Lady Holmes) and Gamine Madcap and illustrated by SilverGryphon8.
The story is set in the Spiderman Raimi-verse beginning roughly a year and a half after the events of the second film. Otto Octavius, having survived nearly drowning, is alive and well and in hiding with his intelligent actuators Flo, Mo, Larry, and Harry. He reluctantly befriends Mouse, a Cute Mute of a little girl when she tries to use the warehouse Otto has been living in as a hideout from the druggies she is forced to share her home with. When Mouse arrives at the warehouse one-day showing signs of a recent beating, Otto sets out to permanently deal with the problem. He meets Robin Goodfellow, who helps him and the actuators eradicate the group of druggies and proceeds to more or less adopt Mouse. The series then follows Otto and Robin’s growing romance, Mouse’s adjustment to a ‘normal’ (relatively) home, and the pesky little problem of people who keep trying to kill all three of them, while it crosses over with a variety of series.
Originally, the fanfic was planned as a trilogy. The first part was rewritten several times.
The fic is posted on FanFiction.Net under Gamine Madcap’s profile and on DeviantArt under SilverGryphon8's profile. The illustrations for the series can also be found at that location.
Book I: If You Give An Octopus A Cookie
Illustrated Version
Unillustrated Verstion
The fic (and several sibling fics) were moved to their own website, now defunct.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Torbert Octavius is abusive to his son Otto. There's a scene during which a momentary glimpse of Robin’s hobgoblin form triggers a flashback about Otto's father coming to beat him after having his glasses broken by school bullies one too many times that leaving Otto whimpering. Mary Octavius's manipulation of her son has flavors of this as well.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Originally, the actuators were part of what convinced Otto to turn evil and start rampaging through New York. They got better, though every now and then…
- Alternate Universe Fic: Though set more or less in the film universe, Otto didn’t die after destroying the second reactor (obviously) and things deviate from there.
- Arch-Enemy: Canonically, Otto and Peter Parker are these to each other. Subverted here, with Peter eventually becoming one of Otto’s interns after he earns a pardon and can legitimately set up a new, government-sponsored lab.
- Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: The four plutonium batteries Otto uses to power the tentacles. At one point he mentions that he's rigged a failsafe in them that will deliberately overload the batteries in the event of his death as a way to keep the tentacles from falling into anyone else's hands, essentially making a quartet of small nuclear bombs. Vindictive as he might be, this trope does get averted in that Otto knows full well that nuclear reactor =/= nuclear bomb and the damage his little batteries would inflict is nowhere near the annihilation of half of Washington DC he threatens.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Larry is armed with a retractable spike.
- Colour Coded Eyes: Robin's eyes are brilliant green, fitting her status as a faerie, except when they turn red.
- Crossover: Primarily Spider-Man with A Midsummer Night's Dream, with dashes of various Marvel comics, the Cal Leandros books, Bones, a brief mention of Doctor Who, as well as others. Note: This Robin is not the Robin of the Cal Leandros books.
- Dead Fic: There were plans to write this story as trilogy. There is only incomplete Book I.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mostly Otto and the actuators, though Robin gets in more than her fair share and many other characters share this trait. It seems to be a favorite of both Gryphon and Madcap.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Otto punches Oberon, the King of the Faeries, in the face and forbids him from EVER coming near his family.
- Fair Folk: Robin Goodfellow and the rest of her faerie crew. As a whole, the faeries are alien, arrogant, and generally disapproving of humans and technology. There are some exceptions, such as Robin herself.
- First Period Panic: Robin becomes entirely human and experiences her first period, much to Otto's discomfort.
- Flat "What": '...wut?' Rather common confused reaction from Otto when Robin does something that breaks the laws of physics or otherwise is very faerie-ish.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The actuators, four large, homicidal, and generally deadly AI-controlled tentacles, are named Flo, Mo, Larry, and Harry. It’s stated that Otto’s deceased wife Rosie named them. The actuators are only dangerous around someone they don't like, or towards any who threaten their people.
- Freak Lab Accident: The disaster of the first fusion reactor, which killed Rosie, allowed the actuators to develop sentience, and led Otto to become Doc Ock. Also, Curt Connors becoming The Lizard counts as this.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Robin's eyes glow red when she becomes the hobgoblin.
- Gorn: Otto has an actuator stab a pedophile in the groin and leaves the man to bleed out.
- Immortality Begins at Twenty: Robin appears to be in her twenties until she becomes a human. Then she looks to be in her thirties. She freaks out a little over this.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: Otto is intelligent and was without friends before he got to college and met Curt and Rosie.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: When Otto briefly absorbs Robin’s hobgoblin magic and Doctor Curt Connors when he becomes the Lizard.
- Kids Are Cruel: Otto was bullied often as a child.
- Mama Bear: Robin. Don't touch her mortals who are like children to her. In one instance, she tore open a man’s ribcage with her bare talons and left him to suffocate. She ripped some others to pieces for messing with her 'children' while reciting poetry.
- Missing Mom: Mouse’s mother lost any interest in Mouse after turning to drugs.
- Morality Chain: Rosie, for Otto. She provided a very stabilizing force for Otto after his messed-up childhood. Her death was one of the primary factors in him becoming Doctor Octopus and is what makes her this instead of being the Morality Pet. Also, later on Mouse and Robin tend to act like this for Otto, helping to prevent him from reverting entirely to being Doctor Octopus.
- Morality Pet: Mouse. Otto's affection for her is really what cements him back on the 'good' side of things.
- My Beloved Smother: Mary Octavius to Otto. She’s obsessed with her son and is convinced that no mere female is worth him taking any attention from his groundbreaking researches. She obliterated Otto’s sole high school attempt at romance and very nearly crushed his relationship with Rosie.
- No Ontological Inertia: Curt Connors’ arm, which grows back when he becomes the Lizard and disappears when it reverts. Allegedly, this drives Gryphon nuts.
- Not a Morning Person: Otto. He can plot before coffee, but he cannot engage in meaningful social interaction.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: Otto knows first aid and has some diagnostic help in the form of the actuators’ sensors, but he makes it clear that he is definitely a physicist.
- Older Than They Look: Robin, who at nearly three thousand looks to be in her early twenties or so. It's because she's a faery.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Downplayed. Otto’s stated specialties are nuclear fusion and mechanical engineering, though it is partially justified in that he’s a genius workaholic who has four sentient AI programs linked into his brain that like surfing the internet…
- Our Fairies Are Different: The Faeries, in particular the way changelings like Robin are handled differs from other depictions in fiction and stories. Robin is, in this version, female and very ticked off that Shakespeare got her gender wrong.
- Punny Name: Otto’s alias on his falsified ID is Dr. Reese Ercher. His companions get some chuckles out of this. No one else really seems to notice.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Otto laments his susceptibility to this- first Rosie, then Mouse and Robin.
- Running Gag: Otto and his fondness for Oreos. Referenced often.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Otto built one of these into the actuators as a way to keep their dangerous technology out of other people’s hands, as an insurance policy to prevent the government from messing with him too much, and just because he’s that paranoid. It’s a particularly nasty version- in the event of Otto’s death, they will go on a homicidal rampage for eight minutes, before the four plutonium batteries powering them go critical and explode.
- Sinister Shades: Otto’s sunglasses and his goggles. Justified in the first part of Book One due to him being left photosensitive after his lab accident, and later used as part of disguises, to keep others from realizing Otto had his eyes healed by Robin, and in the few instances that Otto had to ‘play’ at being Doc Ock, for the sinister factor.
- Split Personality: Otto Octavius and Doctor Octopus are treated as two not entirely separate personalities, with Ock only showing up when Otto is really, really pissed off. Less separate people than polar opposites of the same individual, with a bit of a sliding scale between the two. Otto is afraid of Ock’s lack of inhibiting morals.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Otto and Robin seems to be destined to be unhappy lovers separated by cruel fate — he is a mortal, she is a faerie. Then Robin decided to Take a Third Option. She gives up being a faerie to be with Otto.
- Sunglasses at Night: Otto- at night, during the day, inside, outside, basically any time he doesn’t have the lights off and is using the actuators’ cameras to see by. Justified by the fact that he’s very photosensitive.
- Take a Third Option: Robin gives up being a faerie to be with Otto. Normally, a changeling wanting to become human again would have their memories wiped to reduce the risk of madness; the third option comes in the form of a pendant that stores Robin’s ‘faerie-ness’ and gives her the opportunity to regain that state later on if mortality becomes too much for her.
- Techno Babble: Otto’s second language, specifically the physics and computer dialects. Both Curt and Martha Connors are fluent in the biology variant. This made get-togethers very interesting for first Rosie, and English Lit major, then Robin, who is, well, a faerie and as such not very familiar (or interested) with scientific jargon.
- Technopath: Otto is a low-grade one of these. He’s brilliant enough on his own to develop his inventions; his technopathy primarily manifests itself by making him unconsciously smooth out the little kinks in his design so that they actually work.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Otto loves the Oreos to the point obsession.
- Transformation Trinket: Robin's pendent that contains her faerie powers after she reverts to being human
- Unusual User Interface: The actuators can hook up to a computer and surf the web, with or without Otto’s supervision.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting:
- Robin, between her human and hobgoblin forms, Hob, and Tam.
- Robin's friend Tamora 'Tam' Griffin, a shapeshifter who can change between griffin and humanoid forms. Her default form is human, with catlike eyes and ears, talons, and a lion-like tail.
