ok, I have a question about ROTG. since someone asked about the differences between nightlight and Jack. Whatās the difference between the other guardians from GOC & ROTG? because I think I remember scrolling on your blog and you said Tooth & Toothania were different, along with Bunny & Bunnymund (I think it was mostly their appearance & personality). Is the Boogieman all that different too between GOC & ROTG?
How big of a difference there is depends on the character I think. Take North for example, his main differences can be chalked up to him being older. ROTG North feels like he could be a more mature GOC North. But Tooth feels extremely different, to the point where she doesn't feel like the same character at all to me, beyond perhaps a vaguely similar concept.
This is very personalised to my takes, and other GOC enjoyers will probably feel differently, but here's an attempt at breaking down the main differences:
Full Name, Nicholas St. North. Referred to as North in both GOC and ROTG with the occaisional use of Nicholas in GOC.
Both versions weild swords and infuse their inventions with magic.
In the books North is young (the author changed this on a whim though, so take that with a pinch of salt), and implied to have been a bit of a menace but not entirely immoral as his crimes often focussed more on theft from the rich & battling already violent groups.
His book sends him on a bit of a journey personality wise & forces him to be vulnerable (something he clearly struggles with, despite him getting severely injured nearly every book). He's still bold and overconfident, but we get to see more of his insecurity & his struggles with finding who he is when he's allowed to be vulnerable.
I think the main difference is that ROTG North acts more as a mentor figure, whereas GOC North is the mentee. With a side of insecurity (mostly in the first book, while he's recovering from a wound), and a difficulty in expressing softer feelings that's not present in ROTG North, who is unashamed of showing his softer side.
He still teases Bunny in the books, is loud and outspoken, constantly challenging himself to build bigger and better things. He's still fairly blunt, and definitely kind.
Full Name, E. Aster Bunnymund, referred to as Bunny in ROTG but largely known as Bunnymund with intermittent use of Bunny in GOC.
GOC Bunnymund uses the egg relic staff (containing the light of creation) as well as swords/sabres. GOC Bunnymund has a robotic army of eggs that he created that fights with him. ROTG Bunny's eggs are magical/organic/floral and he fights with boomerangs and egg grenades.
GOC Bunny is wildly different to ROTG Bunny, but interestingly ROTG implies that they are the same person - during the scene where Jack discovers that he's amnesiac we get this exchange:
This scene is essentially poking fun at how different the two Bunny's are. ROTG Bunny is embarassed by the memory of his original GOC clothing and mannerisms. But it's also how ROTG is choosing to explain why the GOC Bunny and ROTG Bunny are so different - ROTG Bunny assimilated with human culture (Australian specifically) after the events of GOC and has had a bit of a personalilty shift due to that.
GOC Bunny was incredibly Autisitic coded - obsessed with anything egg shaped & owning an extensive egg collection, unable to grasp sarcasm or jokes, struggled to communicate or connect with others, often very tech-minded (this is just a trope tbh) & able to hyper-focus on one task.
ROTG Bunny... has elements of this, he's still very interested and proud of his eggs. But he's now able to grasp jokes & sarcasm & even return them. His entire manner of speech has changed from very formal to very casual. He's a lot angrier and more emotional. He finds connecting to others a lot easier seeing as he manages with Jack and Sophie just fine.
Although, I honestly think this is fine & appropriate development for his character. In GOC he's separated himself from all other lifeforms for presumably thousands if not millions of years (oh, he can time travel in the books fyi). I think it's reasonable that he's grown more comfortable with socialising over the years & has adopted the customs of those around him. Doesn't stop him from being wildly different GOC vs. ROTG but there you go.
In GOC his race (Pookas) also process chocolate as a sort of magical drug - so when he eats chocolate he becomes much more impulsive, angrier, more warrior-like in general and will also randomly grow new appendages (he has six arms at one point in the book). So I think it's also reasonable to assume that ROTG Bunny is just eating more chocolate or has grown more resistent to it & is just in a consistent state of being slightly high.
Full Name, Toothiana, referred to exclusively as Tooth in ROTG but often known as Toothiana in GOC.
She uses twin sabres in GOC, in ROTG she uses her wings as swords. GOC Toothiana is able to split herself into many smaller versions of herself, forming a hivemind, while ROTG Tooth seems disconnected from her fairy lookalikes.
GOC Tooth is also incredibly different to her ROTG counterpart. For starters she's got no interest in romance & acts more as a mother to the younger characters including Nightlight (Jack). She's also very subdued compared to ROTG Tooth, often a calm presence or at least a determined quiet one.
She's still kind and supportive of others, GOC Tooth came up with tooth collecting as a way to connect to and play with the other children in her village after the adults tried to traffic her (yes, it's dark, no, the author doesn't acknowledge that). Both Tooth's show an animalistic side, both move a little more like animals than people, but GOC Tooth also hisses or snarls I believe.
Unfortunately I don't have much more to say for Tooth aside from the obvious appearance differences (I believe she's wearing face paints rather than being that pale naturally as she's the biological daughter of Indian/Pakistani parents).
GOC Tooth doesn't get a lot of time to shine - she's only really introduced to us properly halfway through the third book & then barely does anything in books 4 & 5, so while North was able to take the attention of books 1 & 2, and Bunny took half of book 2 & developed his relationships across book 3... Tooth was presented as a bit of a fairytale in her own book, with Mr. Qwerty telling her story for her.
Full Name, Sanderson Mansnoozie, refferred to as Sandy often in both.
ROTG Sandy most often uses dreamsand whips, GOC Sandy is rarely depicted with a weapon but also uses whips and has been depicted with a staff.
GOC Sandy gets more lore than ROTG Sandy. GOC Sandy is able to speak but often chooses to remain quiet. He was close friends with
Mother Nature who is the person who has heard him speak the most. GOC Sandy is fuelled more by regret than anything as he feels responsible for creating the dream that the Nightmares used to turn Pitch who then genocided the whole galaxy.
GOC Sandy and ROTG Sandy are both kind and quiet and a little mysterious. ROTG Sandy has a stronger playful streak than GOC Sandy who is very remorseful and serious. GOC Sandy also initially chose to work alone without the Guardians whereas ROTG Sandy feels much more like a team player.
GOC Sandy was the last to be introduced so he got very little screentime compared to Bunny and North, but he's also a quiet character so he has less to say.
Full Name, Kozmotis Pitchiner, referred to exclusively as Pitch/Pitch Black in ROTG while often known as Pitch in GOC.
GOC Pitch and ROTG Pitch are entirely different beasts. The only similarities is their name, the fact they both lead the Nightmares against the Guardians and both attempt to recruit Nightlight/Jack into their fold.
I think ROTG Pitch also likely shares a similar backstory to GOC Pitch - trusted Generals who lost their daughter & wife & were eventually possessed by the fearlings/nightmares who then turned coats and fought against the Golden Age of the Galaxy.
ROTG Pitch however is a great deal more sympathetic than GOC Pitch. GOC Pitch's only redeeming point is that he is literally out of his mind & Nightlight & Mother Nature both seek to release him from his possession so he may die as a human.
Aside from that, GOC Pitch killed almost the entire galaxy as far as we know with the survivors either so far away as to be unknowable, or hiding on Earth. Bunny's species were wiped out of existence by Pitch, with only Bunny surviving to hide one of Tsar Lunar's relics. The Man in the Moon is the last of his line with both his parents murdered by Pitch personally. The Lunar Lamas are the only other survivors we know of I think, and they're hiding on Mt. Everest somewhere.
GOC Pitch's goal is to destroy anything good so that he can rule as the Nightmare King. He only attempts to recruit Katherine and Nightlight as the remains of the General still seek his daughter & he sees her in both of them. He ahs trappped both Katherine and Nightlight in solitary confinement for a number of days or months in an effort to turn them to his cause.
He has also kidnapped children as leverage against the Guardians, nearly killed North twice, actually killed Ombric (North's mentor) twice kind of (he got better), tortured and mutilated his own people (Blandim and the Monkey King)...
Essentially GOC Pitch is irredeemable & inhuman.
ROTG Pitch is much different & seems to only seek to be feared, not to destroy all kindness in the world. I question whether his actions in Antarctica were anything more than manipulation, but I do think he wanted Jack to side with him regardless of what that would look like (remember that he was emotionally/verbally/physically antagonistic towards Jack when in his lair, and purposefully isolated Jack from his support group). His reaction to the children's lack of belief in him at the end also shows he has emotions beyond rage and manipulation.
So while I still think ROTG Pitch is manipulative and cruel, I also think he is someone with emotions and fears and a possibility of being redeemed (not that I think he'd ever take it, but that's another discussion). GOC Pitch is just a vessel for the fearlings to cause destruction.
For completeness sakes I'm including Jack/Nightlight.
Full Name, Jackson Overland Frost/Nightlight, only referred to as Jack Frost in ROTG but known as Nightlight, Jackson Overland Frost and Jack Frost in GOC.
Nightlight is able to fly and glow brighter or dimmer as he wishes, he is also able to create solid light that others can touch. Nightlight wields a spear/staff or a dagger. GOC Jack Frost is able to change his age at will, fly, create snow and frost. He wields a staff that can shapeshift as needed, notably changing into a bow and arrow. ROTG Jack exclusively uses a blunt staff and can fly and create frost and snow, as well as animate frost drawings.
Nightlight is incredibly quiet, barely ever speaking. He is also not particularly playful or mischievous despite a few offhand mentions of games he plays in book 5 (which is dubious canon to me). He is more comforting than fun.
Nightlight also seems to struggle to connect with people, especially anyone who isn't a direct comfort person for him - Katherine is his lifeline for a lot of the books, as is his moonbeam companion. Jack also seems to struggle to connect with others, and also struggles to let down his guard, but he manages it with North a little better than Nightlight I think (their situations are different though as Jack does get a father figure in North who is excellent at understanding him & how to push him without pushing him away, wheras Nightlight only really wants to be around Katherine who is roughly the same age as him & while she has a unique understanding of him she isn't a security blanket in the same way North is for Jack).
He is however very emotional as we see when it's his POV, especially when Katherine (his bff/romance) goes missing or is in danger. Anxiety is also a big thing for him as he worries over what to tell Katherine and what not to tell her.
Other than general similarities in story ("drowns" to save a sibling, loses memory, goes missing alone for years, joins Gaurdians to fight Pitch) Jack and Nightlight are fairly different characters - on par with Tooth & Bunny's differences from GOC to ROTG.
I definitely forgot some stuff and probably got some stuff wrong as I'm not near my books rn but hopefully other GOC enjoyers can correct me in the notes!
Hope this was interesting if not helpful! Thanks for the ask!
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