#pokemon parody idea ever...

[transmandrake]

Thing that baffles me about Palworld is now its been out a lil and people have explored it more... Apparenlty the whole slavery and animal abuse aspect which is *heavily advertised* as the quirky silly gimmick is... completely optional and often the worst way to play the game.

...

WHY WOULD YOU ADVERTISE IT LIKE THAT??? Oh yeah cuz people who dont like funny haha animal slavery are definitely going to buy the funny haha slavery game. And then its actually like 60% funny haha slavery.

(I'm basing this off the steam page primarily. Its like... Half the description and images. Because surprisingly I expect that to be an accurate representation of the game and if I'm going to like it or not.)

[feralrabidcrow]

Mercs with Access to Internet

Scout: He would be a content creator who just makes whatever he feels like without any consistency. His uploads would be like:

Rooftop Parkour

Pokemon Smash or Pass

I Made A Mistake. (Addressing the Pokemon Video Controversy)

Tom Jones Songs Tierlist

Minecraft Let's Play

Soldier: He makes political rant videos but no one can figure out what his actual political opinions or leanings are. He just kind of spews buzzwords and 'America' a lot while sounding very passionate. A bunch of people assume he's a parody account making fun of actual political rant channels but no it's just Soldier being Soldier.

Pyro: They make TikTok dance videos. In every single video something in the background is on fire. Occasionally you'll hear "Damnit, damnit damnit!" and see Engineer rush in with a fire extinguisher.

Demo: He makes one video tutorial on how to make a pipe bomb, gets all his accounts suspended, and ends up on a hundred different lists.

Engineer: He would be one of those YouTube engineers like 'Michael Reeves' or 'i did a thing' who makes horrible abominations of machinery and technology. His viewers never know whether to be impressed, horrified, or a healthy mix of both.

Heavy: He doesn't ever post anything anywhere but he likes to watch a lot of videos on guns. He also subscribes to cooking channels for new ideas.

Medic: Aggressively spreads misinformation online. Not just medical misinformation, anything. He isn't lazy about it either. He puts genuine effort into making his lies as convincing and believable as possible. He is actively trying to make people less educated. If you ask him about it he'll claim it's a social experiment but he's just doing this for his own amusement.

Sniper: All of his accounts are on private and have like 3 followers. He uses Facebook to keep in contact with his parents and that's pretty much it.

Spy: Doxxes people he disagrees with.

[quackabilly]

Here I've already uploaded this to discourse but you guys can have them too it's toon town OC based

I'm typing this and walking so I'm no spell very good apologies haha

Don't worry about of the only one species and body type I'll be looking that later and making more or whatever haha for now ducks because I was drawing out my ducks:

Left is their technical designs I draw for them out of toon towns color by the lines model restrictions. The right was basically what they look like in game.

Blue one is baby blue/Daffodil/Daffy Blues, and their markings and design is inspired by the pokemon Piplup. They don't yet exist in game, and that's basically because I'm waiting for my irl birthday as I want to give my birthday to them. I ship BB with Cathel/Multislacker and their ship name is Lackadaisy. They have a relaxed gardening vibe with lots of blues, all the blue witch, sea/sailor/ocean, moon items they'll hoard. May also wear a crown or masquerade mask.

Green and red one is Quackabilly and inspired by Hr, Dave Brubot and of course, Duck Shuffler, as I bought his plushie before ever even downloading the game itself. He hoards exclusively gambling and casino motif items. Even if my other save files dont have THAT specific HR, Duck Shuffler or card jester themed item HE WILL.

Lucky predates both of these other goobers AND me joining toontown by a year, being based off the idea of a fictional/fan made casino in Las Nevadas, a parody casino country owned by Quackity's DSMP character. The name? Lucky Duck('s/s). A month later QSMP had the same idea... More or less. Id double down on this and add lucky block markings and a subtle heart motif to lucky.

[latealzalost]

I read that Wes was once going to be the main antagonist in Gale of Darkness. If that had come to be where would Rui be...would she become his servant forcefully or maybe she becomes part of the staff at the Pokemon HQ lab to help with the purifier? Maybe she would go with Michael during the final battle and have a moment with Wes more or less like how Greevil had with Eldes?

Funny thing about that, it's fake, a myth. There was never any notion of Wes ever becoming the bad guy in XD. The notion came from people seeing this parody post of Did You Know Gaming? https://did-yuo-know-gaming.tumblr.com/post/31893325125/pokemon-colosseum back in 2012, reblogging, and spreading it like wild fire. Poketubers and the like picked it up and cemented it into a myth with their influence. There's only ever been so few interviews with Genius Sonority's staff and none of them ever mentioned Wes being included in XD in any capacity. But because the games themselves were already so different from the main-series, nobody ever thought this was too outlandish for Genius Sonority to do. So everyone was just so accepting of this "fact" that turned out to be some shmuck's lie he made in photoshop or some crap. I used to be a believer until this was made apparent to me.

Regardless, I really like the idea of Michael giving Cipher Wes a second chance and being friends after an epic final battle. In the past I've had the idea that Wes would've turned evil by way of experiencing a tragedy or losing a loved one (Rui) to something beyond his control. Typical villain origins. He wouldn't have had the idea of turning evil until long after Colosseum's events. I like your ideas too, but alas at the end of this it's merely fan fiction and AU material, nothing based on canon. And all of it based on a parody account's post that fooled everyone for years.

[olivieraa]

I saw this earlier and I looked at it and flashbacked to 2008

anime communities are definitely strong in large countries, or places where anime was on TV

but the only anime that was on TV here was Pokemon and Ygo. and a very specific channel you had to have to watch DBZ. now with Sailor Moon I've no idea. I dont remember ever coming across it.

but these weren't even considered anime. just another cartoon (that all happened to look similar so you assumed it was the same studio. kinda like fairly odd parents and danny phantom, or simpsons and futurama)

so to watch anime here back in the day was only online.

a lot of people my age had Inuyasha as their first anime from watching it at a young age in America, bc it was on adults swim. I've been to florida six times and watched american channels (an experience I must say) but I dont rememeber coming across it.

so living here I obviously got into Inuyasha when internet was growing. watched it on youtube. my first first anime.

and then after that, I cant even remember how I even learned about the animes that followed. but this is from a document I've had since the very first year I watched anime.

ok I actually know how I got into DNA2 - it was described as a ygo parody of sorts. and then Crying Freeman was bc I used to skip school and hid at the local library, and cause I'd just started anime, I decided to read manga, and that one was there. the following one's I've no idea. and there's a few more that come after that before I eventually hit Death Note, which is one of the greatest series ever made. and then eventually Durarara and Kuro and such.

very few of these were watched while I was still in school. I'd tell people about them casually but nobody really had an interest. it was considered my weird hobby. and that was fine.

but majority of my anime watching in the early years came from when I lived for over a year and a half in isolation. so I had absolutely nothing to do as an 18 year old. I visited my friends once every 4 months and went clubbing, like a young person should. and then when I'd return home and not see anyone for months, it was purely anime, and anything anime related.

2011 came along and I'm on tumblr, and then 2012 I'm in fandom world. and it was weird.

and then by 2014, I'm fully liveblogging. did that for a little over 2 years and then sorta disappeared.

I knew I needed an anime break. and it was so refreshing to be away from fandom, and tumblr, and honestly, just anime in general. the terrible series that came out every season weighed me down mentally. the gems were so few.

and yet there's always this voice in the back of my head, wondering if I should jump straight into it again. to liveblog, to get into debates and discussions, to review, to full on argue.

or just... watch an anime, and chill.

idek if I know how to do that. last time I did was over 10 years ago.

anime either fills me with a fuckload of emotions or riles me the hell up, and I feel like when I write it down on here, I've expressed those feelings better.

idek.........

like I want to liveblog my continuation of snk on here bc it was one of the first I ever did. and haikyuu. maybe some others

but new animes. idk.

[wild-catra]

so I played some palworld and read some ciritques...

what I find annoying abt every ciritque of the designs I've read or listened to so far is that no self styled critic seems to know the word "parody" (which is protected by law, so no they are not commiting plagiarism ). the designs are supposed to be knock offs and mashups, that's the entire selling point of the game (otherwise it's just a bland survival craft/creature collector game like everything we got after the ark boom), so critizising that over and over again seems kind of pointles??? but it's the only thing everyone ever talks about "this one looks like lycanroc" yea so what? lycanroc was a bland boring cheap design to begin with, the ciritque should be that pocketpair did not improve it or made it funny when they had the chance. arguably it looks even more bland now.

so my main gripe is with how cheap most knockoffs and mashups are… they're very hit or miss, some are cute and were altered enough to become smth unique but most are just lazy and boring, especially the million generic fox monsters. most pals are useless (there's WAY too many pals with the same abilities imo) and ugly so like there's no point keeping them except to fill your dex and grind for xp, which admittely is less tedious than in ark with vanilla settings

so it's mostly the quality that is lacking, in this state it's just not a good parody and not a good game, it's more of what a 14 year old edgelord woul come up it if they were supposed to design a parody of pokemon/ark.

like it as some nice gameplay ideas but idk if it's an issue bc it's so super early access, a lot of it doesn't work well. path finding is atrocious, pals and npcs get constantly stuck, base size is waaaay too small for how much shit you need to build, esp when you get the bigger, better pals with massive hitboxes so even more likely to geet stuck, but also there are no big flat ground areas where you can build w/o obstruction (at least in the early game areas), pals constantly abandon their asigned workstation, esp frustrating when it's smtv like cooling the fridge.

this game needs so much work still to at least distract from their ugly creature designs, which a crature collector game should not have to do. like sure there are duds in every creature collector but they're not supposed to make up the majority of the designs.

[bellmo15-blog]

I've Lost My Passion For Writing

The title of this journal isn’t a joke. I have seriously started to lose my passion that I once had for writing.

I’m sure by now a lot of you have noticed I haven’t been writing any stories of any kind. Or at least anything substantial. You could say that those two stories I have shared about those really awkward plays I saw as a child or the only time I’ve ever actually gotten to play on a real Gamecube while in hospital count as stories but those are more just me retelling events form my past that have stuck with me. And there’s a good reason I haven’t been writing a lot. I’ve HAVE tried to write proper stories. About my OC’s, about fictional characters I like, but I always never get very far into it and sometimes just stop entirely or get distracted by other things I have more fun doing. And there’s a good reason for THAT two. I just haven’t been enjoying writing as much. It’s one of those things I have slowly been coming to terms with a lot recently. In fact the only long form things I’ve even managed to get written up the past few months have both been satirical and if you couldn’t tell from how I wrote those, my way of venting about how modern critics are obsessed with hyperbole and being overly angry and also poking fun at that “Nintendo has FORGOTTEN about Super Mario” video because nothing say’s Nintendo has “””forgotten””” a property like releasing so many games in that franchise in the Switches now almost 7 year life cycle.

To give you an idea of just how bad this has been, the last story about one of my OC’s I wrote was back in April of last year. It was a parody of the Peaches song from the Super Mario Bros movie but sung from the perspective of my girl Mikaela and she was singing about Nessa from Pokemon Sword and Shield as I do have the two in a relationship and loved that part from the film. And before that the last proper full story I wrote was in September of 2022 of Tom Nook from Animal Crossing finally being fed up with some people not paying off their loans at all and taking action tasking my sona Michael with collecting the debt from one of those residents who originally started as a joke OC I made for an April Fools day joke. That’s a pretty big gap to have as someone who is a writer which is actually why I originally tried experimenting with Micro Stories at first since they were only about like two or three paragraphs long and didn’t take much effort out of me. But even those I started to fall out of wanting to do.

So why have I stopped having a passion for something I use to love doing ever since I first started on DA? Well, it’s not for one single reason but actually a couple.

1; I’ve started to find it boring! No matter what I want to write, no matter how much I love the idea and no matter how much free time I end up getting so that I can do a lot of writing, usually about like 5 or 10 mins in I get board of writing and more often than not I end up thinking to myself “I would honestly rather be playing video games or watching a show I’ve been meaning to watch.” Plus, I can only write “this character said this” or describe what someone looks like or is wearing so much before I get bored.

2; Written work is something I’ve always struggled with anyway. I grew up on TV and video games and very little written stuff which might sound ironic coming from me but it’s true. I once tried reading one of the Harry Potter books as a child and I got one chapter in before thinking to myself “I’d honestly rather be watching the movie that’s based off this book.” Hell, I even tried reading the in game books in Skyrim but when I did I would always go “I’m spending my time in this game doing THIS instead of going on an epic and exciting quest?” The only time as a child I’ve ever read a book all the way though that wasn’t one of those ones that only had like two short paragraphs on each page and was like 15 pages long was in 2009 when a friend let me read an old Choose Your Own Adventure styled Super Mario book but that only because it was on a school trip, we were on a long train ride that took several hours and we weren’t allowed to bring our handheld games systems with us so there was practically nothing else to do. It’s a problem I have been trying to fix for many years and sometimes I do read stories on DA when I get the chance, but written works just always been something I’ve struggled with even as a child.

I mentioned before that this is an issue that my passion for this has been dwindling for a while and I’ve tried to find ways to get around this. At first it was writing little short stories to attach to my pics. I was mainly inspired to do this by the likes of other’s like IncredibleIntruder who like me is into hypnosis and especially belly dancing but also puts little short stories in the descriptions of the stuff he commissions and uploads to his page and still continues to do so to this day. I HAD experimented with this kind of stuff before coming across there content but it wasn't until I started seeing some of there commissions I really started to take my stories for my pics seriously. And I’d continue to do this for a lot of my commissions as well. Even if it was a pic the artist didn’t give me permission to upload like with that Symbiote Shantae and Rottytops pic I’d still write a story for it! And eventually, I just only wrote up a short synopsis of what happened in leading up to what we see in a pic in its description because I wasn’t having any fun with these stories anymore. Which again, sucks that I feel that way because I do think about this stuff a lot. Especially the pics based around my self insert sona, something I’m extremely proud to have created, because the whole reason that exists was born of decades of me having a hyper active imagination and always imagining myself actually in the worlds of the games I play, especially ones that let you play as customized characters such as Wii Sports Resort or Mario Kart Wii, and making up my own little Kingdom Hearts styled crossover universe but wasn’t just relegated to stuff belonging to a single property… And also the lore not being a headache to get used to.

For example, the pic of my sona becoming an Ankha Drone I had this whole story planned out while it was getting worked on of them walking into Ankha suddenly in their home on their island with two other Ankha Drones and would be the ones converting my sona into one of them. Then there’s the one of them in the coils of Naga Shantae which would have been right after an encounter with Risky Boots and both my sona and Shantae being very exhausted and Shantae offering some nice and snug coil hugs until we were both ready to head home. And the Techno Drone pic where the story would of involved them knowing about SuperTechno (the artist of that pic who’s sona turns characters into fembots) hypnotizing ladies into being his Fembots while still extending it to males, not being aware of the fact that many of the Fembots in Techno’s army were kidnapped, asking if he could allow himself to be a drone with one of the main reasons he wants this and allows himself to be hypnotized a fair bit is because of not having the best mental state, something I obviously am implying I sometimes have and this was my way of projecting onto them. Similarly, the Ashour Drone pic I got of my sona was going to have a story of them finding Shantae as an Ashour Drone and confused on why she’s the way she is which leads him back to Ammer (again, artist of that pic and who’s sona is a freelance hypnotist hypnotising willing people into being his Ashour Drones) and after looking into him and his drones a bit more offering to be one of his Ashour Drones for a similar reason to the Techno Drone one. Even my most recent pic of my Genie AU sona with Urbosa I tried to write a whole story of her originally finding the lamp and the two of them exchanging some dialogue before using hypnosis on her to influence her wish for a massage.

And yes, this applies to Mikaela pics as well. The collab I got with Violet Scales featuring both our OC’s I wanted to write a story of Mikaela stumbling upon a snake basket housing Jermisha during one of Mikaela’s erotic photoshoots as an explanation as to why she was already dressed in bedlah to begin with. The pic of Naga Mikaela mummified I wanted to write a story of her trying to surprise attack Eliza from Skullgirls to potentially add to her harem but backfiring and resulting in Naga Mikaela mummified by Eliza and coupled with some taunting from the 1000 year old Egyptian Vampire followed by her telling the Naga that she’s going to make a great display peace for her place. Even the pic of Naga Mikaela with Sharah I considered writing a story about her finding Sharah’s ring and putting it on not knowing that there was a cute genie girl inside and that’s how they met.

Hell, even writing this I struggled with doing and the only reason I pushed though was because it felt wrong to not have any new full-length stories without giving an explanation on why. Now at this point I’m sure a lot of you would be saying “Oh there’s an easy solution for this. Just use something like ChatBotGT or some other AI program to do the stories for you! Does all the work and gives you more time to do other things.” But I hope you NEVER fucking said that because telling me to use a style of generative content, which is notorious for being built of stealing other people’s work and passing it off as something ‘original’ just to get over my own lost desire to write is fucking stupid! Honestly, I think the better and more healthy option for me is to just stick with what I’ve been doing for the last few pics. Short descriptions and a brief summery that still add’s lore to my characters if needed. That might disappoint a lot of you who followed me solely for the writing but let me ask you this. What do you think is more important? Me forcing myself to slog though writing a story I’m not having fun writing and even if I do finish it my reaction will be more of a “thank God that’s over” reaction than any sort of positive one or doing shorter stuff that doesn’t take as much time to do and I know most people probably don’t even read anyway (sadly) so I can focus on what I enjoy more?

In fairness I knew this would happen eventually, because how many stories have you heard of creators who have lost their drive and motivation for what they enjoy doing? Need an example? How about Hideo Kojima who didn’t even want to work on Metal Gear Solid 4 originally because he just didn’t have the same passion for this franchise as he did once and the only reason he even agreed to work on 4 in the end was because of all the death threats he got from fans? Or how we almost got a new Jak and Daxter game in between the release of Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us but it ended up being cancelled because no one at Naughty Dog felt any motivation to make a new Jak game and they literally went “Are we really doing this because we want to or because of marketing reasons?” Or how about Geroge Lucas having to put up with so much hate and harassment from Star Wars fans though out the 2000’s just because of how he was telling the story that he created to the point where it just wasn’t fun for him anymore and gladly sold the franchise to Disney when offered without a second thought. (And before any revisionist historians try to comment “umm, no actually! That’s not it! Your just being a Disney apologist!” Clearly you don’t remember what George Lucas said in an interview one time before months before the Disney buy out. “Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a horrible person you are” anyone?)

So yeah, I’m sorry if this is sad news to anyone. But because I lack the passion I once had you really shouldn’t expect any new long stories for a good long while.

[thekuraning]

im not really excited about the prospect of gamefreak "we made a romhacker into an indentured servent once" having a copyright on round headed blue creatures with platypus tails. personally speaking

That's cool! Neither am I! I'm not really sure where I ever said they should, frankly. I'm also pretty sure that's not how copyright works even if people wanted it to, but then again I thought platypet was from coromon, so who knows with me.

Like I said, there are differences that do make fuack relatively distinct from oshawott, and personally I do think if there were any legal grounds for the Pokemon Company and Nintendo to do anything, we would have heard about it already. (See: the pokemon mod for palworld they took down in what... hours after it went live on Nexus?)

I think based on the tone of the game there's also grounds to call it parody (I have no idea if parody is protected under Japanese law and im still researching that, but I do believe in protecting parody on a personal level.)

I do think it's pretty obvious that a good chunk of pals took direct inspiration from Pokemon to the point where I and people I know can look at some of them and point out which specific ones they used design elements from. Things like Melpaca's virizion boots, incineram's zoroark hair, lifmunk's leafeon ears and dot, kingpaca's empoleon horn, direhound's lycanroc head..... No one is going to mistake them for the pokemon they've referenced, obviously. They are not exact copies and I'm not claiming they are or that there should be legal consequence for looking similar.

I am a little bit concerned about whether or not they've used assets directly from other games to make their models, which, look—I'm not going to shed a tear for TPC. It's one of the biggest franchises in the world. But if they did, it does make me wonder if they'd done the same thing to other indie monster catcher devs.

Which is why I keep talking about Platypet. I've been talking about fuack for two days now. Because I kept seeing people say "it looks like platypet." One person said specifically "platypet from COROMON."

So my original post anon. Was that no. Fuack does not look like PLATYPET. And that I was a dumbass for thinking platypet was from COROMON. Because platypet is from TEMTEM actually. And my reaction to my brain being infested with fuack all day and then starting a new legends arceus file. Was hey. Actually. If anything. Fuack looks like oshawott. Because it does.

TL;DR: saying something looks like something else is not a a call for TPC to own the rights to a shape—be it copyright, trademark, WHATEVER—or for paldev to face legal action or consequence for having a little dude that looks similar.

[olivine-gal]

Even given that Palworld is very obviously derivative of Pokemon's artstyle (and on some occasions very specific designs) it's just not very imaginative in its artstyle. Most of what I've seen feels very one-note in concept and doesn't ever push the extra mile - for a game that's very on-the-nose about being edgy Pokemon I'd expect at least some dumb edgy parodies of common Pokemon tropes, but it's just banal first draft ideas. If it were just a simple Pokemon knock-off I doubt it would curtail any attention

[bogleech]

 I think the reason we see so much 80′s nostalgia is just because new ideas were valued so much more. New things feel special and the pop culture landscape of the 80′s was absolutely packed with ideas so new it still feels hard for me to fully appreciate, and I was there! Imagine Super Mario being so new people were calling it “INSANE!” and joking that it was “ON DRUGS” because a plumber ran around jumping on turtles. Imagine people being wowed by the idea of both supernatural elements and sci-fi technology in the same franchise: that’s what Ghostbusters normalized and that too was so unusual at one time it was “crazy!!!” to reviewers. Toys that transform between robots and cars??? UNBELIEVABLE. Kids and adults couldn’t believe that a toy could possibly have moving parts that intricate and not cost an entire paycheck.

Imagine a world where even fucking *Garfield* is new. Garfield! Not just new but seen as almost EDGY for his sarcastic personality! People weren’t used to a cartoon cat smugly insulting his owner! That’s why he made a million zillion dollars, because people thought that was the freshest most hilarious shit in Sunday strips at one time!

You know why there’s a billion takes on a zombie apocalypse now? Because, while the concept goes back to the 60′s, the broader public had never considered the doomsday horror potential of a mass zombie outbreak scenario or the “survival fantasy” aspects until 1978′s “Dawn of the Dead.” Gremlins was the first horror-comedy about nasty little creatures running amok. Films like “Child’s Play” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” were some of the first mainstream cases of a wisecracking horror villain. E.T. was the first successful fantasy science fiction drama about child protagonists befriending a benevolent paranormal entity. 1979′s “Alien” on the other hand successfully wrung tense psychological horror from the concept of a “space monster” just when most audiences were dismissing the idea as corny and juvenile. The “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” though intended as parody characters, were the first mainstream case of anthropomorphic animals marketed as “cool” action heroes instead of completely jokey characters like “Mighty Mouse.” Nobody had ever seen a dark puppet fantasy like Labyrinth before. Nobody had ever seen anything like the Cenobites before. Little Shop of Horrors was adapted to a Broadway musical in 1982 and was such a hit they got the Rick Moranis film into theaters only four years later.

The 80′s feel like the last decade with such a ratio of new, novel concepts and bold decisions that actually took off to just endless remakes, sequels and homages. Shit came out in the 80′s that invented whole subgenres, character archetypes and everyday household concepts everybody just takes as a given now. This sort of slowed down over the course of the 90′s, and then Pokemon was possibly one of the last things that was like mind-blowingly world-changingly ��different” in the eyes of the most audiences. Now I have a hard time thinking of any entertainment media from over the last 22 years that made half that big a difference, and even less over the last 10. :(

[0poole]

I LOVE No Straight Roads

Honestly it’s hard to keep me away from a game with great visuals and even greater character design. I knew from the INSTANT I saw these characters that I was going to love it. I just finished it because it’s (unfortunately) pretty short, and even though I cheesed the final boss through it’s very lenient death mechanics (Instant respawn at the cost of a good rank) I actually appreciated that it wasn’t a pure cake walk. I’ve yet to rematch all of the bosses, but since I had genuine trouble with the later ones I’ll hold off on that.

But who cares about gameplay, am I right? I sure as hell don’t. I would’ve bought the game no matter what the hell it was. I wanted the characters (and the music, although I realized that second) and that was it. 

First of all, I love any world that is super fantastical but cheesy in its concept, ala a city powered by music, and battles between artists using music. Ideas like this only spawn from a mind that wants to create a fun atmosphere, if nothing else, and it was sure as hell fun. I genuinely love when someone goes so far into a crazy idea and doesn’t waste your time explaining it with real world logic. Wanna know how a city can be powered by music? Shut up and look at the cute virtual mermaid. Lord knows I did. Every once in a while, it does you good to just let the player/reader/viewer just revel in the idea without having to go out of your way to make things seem realistic. It’s not about “turning your brain off” or whatever, it’s picking your battles.

Also, I can seriously love a world with great background characters to it. Any game with the right situation to insert the random nobodies you find onto the streets into the art in the credits really played into the greatness of the world’s less important characters, and that’s always a good thing. It’s technically world building. But, since I always love to pick favorites, I’d have to say my favorite background character is easily Mia, the NSR infodesk assistant. It’s funny, because you can literally search “nsr characters” into Google and she’s the third image result. I love how jumpy she is when you first interact with her, since NSR probably spread the word about B2J suggesting they’re rock thugs who’d beat up anyone, so for all she knows she could die right then and there with a guitar lodged in her skull. She’s probably just some intern trying to pay for college. She don’t want trouble.

Also, I just realized that 90% of the characters in this game have the same body structure that I always love, that being having arms/legs that sort of fan out in width into relatively large hands/feet. It’s a kind of limb structure I fall into so much because it just really hits me right for some reason. I really can’t explain why.

Anyways, I gotta talk about the big boys individually:

Mayday and Zuke are an amazing duo. I’m always a sucker for a cute and crazy girl, but honestly Zuke hit so many of the right notes too. I will say it’s weird to pair the martian Zuke with the humanly-skinned Mayday, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because he looks so cool on his own. I love his weird blocky blue dreadlocks, and his weirdly shaped shirt which bares his chest in the weirdest way... And, oh my god, Mayday’s weird Spongebob background flower eyes? It’s little tidbits like that that really make me jealous. How could I have ever thought of that? It looks so perfect, and I don’t know why. And her little booty jig she does in her idle animation? Adorable. I played as her as much as was reasonable not only because I’m a filthy button masher with little strategy but also because she’s so damn cute. I can also appreciate how she has a tough-as-nails persona while still keeping a semi-girly attitude, like with her falling for 1010 and Sayu. Characters are so much better when they’re a perfect blend of characteristics, instead of being all one-note, like how Zuke is the quiet one but gets heated against DK West, and all. 

Honestly the voice acting for every character is great, but I love when Mayday’s VA’s accent shows through. It’s a perfect twang to accent (consider this the only acknowledgement of a pun in this post) her snarkiness. 

DJ Subatomic Supernova was going to be an easy favorite since he’s all space-themed. Also, I don’t know why I always end up liking the egotistic characters. Not in the sense that I like their egotistic-ness, but in the sense that I like everything else about them and they just so happen to also be egotistic. The same applied with Empoleon (maybe like my 2nd favorite Pokemon) and Rarity from MLP, probably among others. Either way, I’ll never not love space themes. Not to mention he’s got a funky disco theme, and I’m slowly starting to realize that I am in extreme love with techno-funk styles of music. The instant I heard his music he cemented his place into my playlists. 

As for design, I still have no idea what the fuck he is. Clearly AI is at human levels in this world, but if he’s a robot why does he still have hairy legs? But, if he’s a human, is that weird orb his head? Is it just some sort of puppet which he controls from inside his giant jacket? I know I dissed explaining things realistically but I actually want to know with this guy. Even the wiki doesn’t say. Either way, he’s clearly the logical extreme of “being at the center of your own universe.” Even his jacket depicts a solar system, with his hood being the sun. Didn’t see that until I tried to draw him. I really wish this guy wasn’t so tied to his DJ stand so I could reasonably draw him without it. I don’t want to draw his hairy ass legs. It is a great touch for his design though (although I prefer his beta look with pants and long boots, another design trait I tend to gravitate to) since DJs could reasonably not wear pants, since they’re always behind a table.

Sayu is my favorite. It’s so plainly obvious. It’s weird to say that sometimes, because some characters like Sayu are so clearly engineered to be as adorable as possible, to the point where they’re basically a parody of whatever they’re supposed to be emulating, but then they do that so well that they are still likable for what they’re trying to parody. Also, even though I’ve never looked into any vocaloid superstars myself, the fact that they exist and are loved in real life is absolutely perfect to be used as a character design in a world like this. It’s so weird conceptually, but we all know it’s normal and realistic. But yeah, she’s a giga-cutie whom I’ve already drawn and I’ve listened to her theme on loop on many different occasions. Favorite character, favorite track, favorite weapon of choice (What did I say about Empoleon?), which, and I wouldn’t have noticed this myself, looks like the USB symbol you see above USB ports on computers. How crazy perfect is that?

Even apart from my unbridled love for cute monster robot(?) girls, her boss fight is probably the 2nd greatest of them all, at least conceptually. She’s just a hologram, so you can’t touch her, but you CAN disconnect the artists which control her in order to defeat her. It’s the kind of concept for a boss fight that could only work for this type of character. I’m a sucker for the cute girl that provides her voice, but I love how the animator (video editor? the yellow one) actually attacks you with a mouse and lowers the brightness of the setting once he appears. Also, the mocap guy being the deeply-voiced type but still providing the adorable movements of her body. It’s such a great combo of characters, and their little extra art in the credits makes me like them even more. I just wish we could interact with them individually.

DK West was probably one of the most interesting characters visually, especially since I knew of every other NSR member long before the game came out, but I only just heard of him closer to the release. I wasn’t sure where he was placed, but I definitely assumed his gig was the weird shadow demon we saw in the trailers. When I finally saw him in game, I was shocked to hear him speak an entirely different language most of the time, which was really cool. Also, finding out he was tied to Zuke and wasn’t strictly an NSR artist really made him more interesting. You know, if his fucking shadow clone magic didn’t make him crazy cool enough. Even though I suck at his game and am not especially fond of his raps, the visual of him rapping with this giant monster behind him and dozens of weird shadow wingmen by his side hyping him up was probably one of the coolest in the entire game. The dark way they were hyping him up too gave such a bizarre atmosphere, especially since it parallels his seemingly chill and smiley demeanor. 

I definitely hope they’ll introduce new bosses as DLC in the future, and make them sort of in the same vein as DK West, where they aren’t the biggest artists ever, but they want to pick a fight with B2J. I’d kill for any extra content this game can provide.

Yinu is obviously special since she was the subject of the demo they put out for the game. Even though I knew all her bells and whistles, she and her mom still beat me a few times in the full game. Considering she’s semi-tied to story-ish spoilers I kinda want to go more into her in a separate section. It is worth considering playing the game first since it’s not hard (with the easy going deaths) and it’s short length.

1010 seriously grew on me as I learned more about them and interacted with them. I got their shtick when I first looked at them, but after seeing that animation of them touring the city on Youtube I was kinda falling for them. Then, I learned that they’re apparently repurposed navy war robots? I mean, maybe not them specifically, but it seems to heavily point in that direction, with the warship cars and “attention!”s and all. It took me a bit to get into their music too, but once I actually fought them and put their actions to the music I fell in love with it. I swear, Neon J’s weird dancing can has some of the smoothest moves in all of gaming. I don’t know whether they mocapped out those movements or got one of the greatest animators ever, but it looks so impossibly clean his part of the song gets me like 30x more hype than it would normally. 

Also, their little art piece of them looking at fan mail in the credits is probably one of the most adorable things ever. Even if they’re just Neon J’s puppets, that piece of art really makes it seem like they love every one of their fans. I’m not gonna lie, I might swoon a bit too if they picked me out and gave me some special attention.

Oh yeah, and the fact that Mayday was super sad in her showstopper against them was adorable and hilarious at the same time. The little tweaks they made to the showstopper for each fight were great.

Eve just has to be Lady Gaga, right? Like, an even crazier Lady Gaga. DJSS is Daft Punk (or any artist with a helmet persona, you know what I’m talking about), Sayu is Hatsune Miku, DK West is Kanye West, Yinu is a generic child protege, 1010 is a KPop boyband (just pick one) and Eve is Lady Gaga. That’s just how things are. But, again, this is the kind of boss fight that only this type of character could provide. It’s not just surreal imagery, it’s ARTISTIC surreal imagery. The fight is so mesmerizing in every way, especially by how it starts off so slow and calm and progresses to insanity, as well as the increased emotional investment in the fight making you feel so much more into it than just “That’s the boy band. Let’s fight.” Not only does it get you more invested, but it makes her artistic persona go deeper than just “she looks weird.” She is genuinely conflicted about her relationship with Zuke, and naturally that leads her to literally split him and Mayday apart. That mechanic specifically was the coolest, although I do wish they made it more obvious when you needed to switch over to a different side. I was getting pulverized by her fight too, since there were so many things to pay attention to. Her fight was definitely the best one. 

Tatiana and Spoilers:

Let’s be real with ourselves, the twist was so obvious. I do also think, though, that obvious twists aren’t bad if they’re just good reveals. At some point, a person just has experienced so many stories that “only pretty good” twists are easy to spot. It doesn’t mean that the twists are bad, it just means you yourself experienced.

I feel like her transition from rock to EDM was pretty understandable, even as a non-musician. She was so caught up in what she assumed was popular that it basically consumed her. It’s easy as an artist to want to forgo what you truly want to make in favor of what makes you popular, and clearly since her transition to EDM made her the CEO of the biggest company in the city (world?) that probably made her think she truly needed to change her outlook. Then, when she saw B2J try to bring it back, she sort of coined them as being as misguided as she was and knocked them down a peg. Plus, they were kinda being jerks about it.

It’s kinda like the Trolls sequel, where everyone pegs rock music fanatics as being too stuck up in their own heads to appreciate other types of music, which honestly seems more like the case than the alternative. When I first heard of the story of the game, I was seriously hoping they did put an asterisk on B2J’s ambitions because they were a bit sketchy from the start. 

That’s kinda where I want to talk about Yinu, because she was the true turning point in what they were doing. She’s literally 9 and yet she’s getting dragged into all this BS. When she said “I hate you all” at the end of her fight, and played a somber tune on her broken piano after the fight destroyed it, you kinda got a kick in the face to realize you’re kinda being an asshole to some of them. Sure, they fight back, but they wouldn’t fight in the first place if they didn’t have to. They are just people who play music under a joint name that B2J just so happened to get in hot water with. 

Then, of course, there’s Kliff, who also reeked of surprise villain, and who’s basically the embodiment of the bad side of B2J, where he just wanted to destroy for his own sake and not for the actual greater good. Once B2J realized their mistake, they backed off, but Kliff was so hard pressed to do what he planned on in the first place he wouldn’t stop. I kinda wish he got a bigger fight to his own since he’s clearly a big enough tech genius to divert a whole satellite into one specific building. Maybe the Elliecopter chase bit was his thing, but I do kind of wish he was there to fight against them too.

Even though Tatiana did kind of reform a bit quick, It’s still not too crazy to assume she could see that B2J was just misguided and the fact that they worked to revert their wrongdoings for her sake would make a pretty strong impressions. They clearly can hold their own, so it’s not like she wouldn’t want them to join NSR too. 

Oh yeah, and her boss fight was clock/time themed. If there’s a theme under space that I love, it’s clocks/time. 

And If I am to be respected by the internet, I must provide a negative opinion to balance out my positive one. I will say that the character model physics (like Mayday’s braids, DK West’s vest thing, Neon J’s fluffy neck thing, etc) got kinda funky at times. Especially DK West’s vest, which was completely messed up for every scene he was in... Also, even though the voices are mostly great, some lines felt a bit off. Just a bit. That good enough? Good.

But yeah anyway that’s another favorite game to add to the pile. Eventually I’m gonna have to compile a true list of my all-time favorite games/movies because I do kind of want to have a solid idea of what my all-time favorites are.

[fangirltothefullest]

Hi-a! I have a question about a post you reblogged, the one about writing commissions and fanfic. I'm a bit... confused. I get what the post is saying in how creators have reacted to fanworks being monetized, but, why is it exclusive to fic? Fanart commissioning is completely open I've seen. What makes writing different from art in that respect? I know you do art commissions yourself so I thought you might know.

Ah ok yes this can be very confusing! This is also something I have to go into detail on because it covers multiple things. 

One, fanart is an art form that is entirely visual. Visual arts are not copyrighted the same way as written works/print. Fanart commission, while it seems more widespread is not actually open. There’s a very delicate line we walk under the creative commons liscense that says we are not making an exact copy of a thing and selling it so we have the right to slight creative liberty and freedom. This is also why farce can make fun of stuff while referencing it for comedy’s sake. There’s a lot of legal stuff about it I can;t go into because I’m not a lawyer but that’s part of it. 

I cannot sell drawn pokemon works on redbubble because they have contacted redbubble and said purge all artwork pertaining to our licensed characters. Even if I draw it in my own style, even if I’m drawing pokemon fusions or whatever, redbubble kicks it off because the company which owns the licensing for pokemon said NO. sometimes you can squeak under the radar but usually they get you eventually.

It’s a lot EASIER to sell fanart but it’s still a touchy subject. At any point a creator can say hey that’s my character, do not draw artwork of my character. Disney is notable for doing this. So while fanart is much more prevolent, it’s stil la fine line to walk. 

Now onto the written word- This is all Anne Rice’s fault. I’m only barely joking.  The author got SO angry that people were doing fanfiction of her works that she literally sued people and it became a huge thing in court. This is why AO3 is what it is and why it’s run by lawyers and why they have such strict rules. The lawyers that run AO3 have the rules they have because they are your ticket to total fanfiction freedom. Their lawyers say that if someone comes after you and tries to sue you for writing a fanfic, they will protect you from harm under fair use. BUT you CANNOT make money off of it or the protections they have given you by using the site no longer count. AO3 is a place where you can post it freely, but the moment you make money off it, then it becomes questionable as fair use. Because parody or not, a good lawyer can argue that it’s not fair to the original author if you are profitting off of their original copyrighted material and that’s a fair assumption to have. 

You CAN charge for fanfics, but again you have to be EXTREMELY careful where you put it, who sees it and what you do with it. That is why you must never say on AO3 that you take commissions and that is why they say it in their TOS. It’s to protect the users. Posting on AO3 means you’ll never be sued so long as you follow those rules. It’s literally a safe haven for fic writers.

And, it’s also a matter of content- nothing is ever new, particularly when it comes to the written word. We only have so many words and there are gazillions of books, more being made every day. I can guarantee there are hundreds of thousands if not millions that have the same plots, the same character names and even the same wording here and there. Humans do that. 

But this is also why copyright is stupid and why written copyright has a limit before it runs out. (Alice in Wonderland is out of copyright, but the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland is not. This is why you cannot make disney-looking characters but you can have as many versions as you want. It’s the same with Hans Christian Anderson’s faerietales.)

No matter how much we try to be innovative, people will have the same ideas. That’s just human. But the problem is, if you are a published author you might be in the middle of writing a book and realize you have the same plot as someone else. And if you publish that book and the other person says wait I wrote this first, they could accuse YOU of stealing and claim you owe THEM money. Marion Zimmer Bradley (the article talks about this too) actually experienced this. She encouraged fanfiction because loved that people enjoyed her stories. I’m like this too, if I write something and people love the world, it makes me happy. But you can see why things like that could get touchy! 

The Copyright Act of 1957 (in America) lists parody under the protection of fair use and technically one can make the argument that fanfiction is parody. But if I published my own personal book and someone accused me of stealing, knowing full well I have read fanfiction before, I might have to pay royalties to a person whom I never even knew existed over a story I worked really hard on! 

This is why (as an example) Thomas Sanders and his team when writing for the Sanders Sides have outright stated they are not going to read, and have never read, fanfiction. Because while they encourage it wholeheartedly, if they happen to have similar ideas they can claim it came naturally and this way nobody can go to them and be like you stole my work where’s my money? This is also why his team decided to offer patrons of their patreon the ability to be part of the writers room. It’s a good compromise- get ideas from the fans which they know have good ideas, while also avoiding the whole “we stole this” thing by making them part of the team through access to that privilege, and then writers of fanfic can get their ideas maybe canonized. I think a lot of creators should think about doing this.

Artwork is a COMPLETELY different ballgame in that regard because the styles vary SO much more than writing. It’s also a different process to get your art copyrighted as a style itself. So like... that’s also a thing. That’s why it’s hard for artists when people repost their art without credits because copyrighting a style and each artwork? I don’t even know how you’d begin to do that, much less uphold it. But writing you can uphold, writing is easier to prove because you can match things, character, places, scenarios word for word. 

This has been a little back and forth but does this all make sense? 

[deerdeardarling]

I'm sure someone's thought of this (because I've never had an original idea ever),

But.

I need the Cell Block Tango. Except with the pokemon champions, (so like Cynthia, Daintha(?), N, Leon, idk who else there's two spots left). But like instead of them committing m^rder it's them telling their sides of the story, or maybe even vying for their innocence (that they didn't summon an ancient being that will most likely destroy the whole region)

Idk I've just been listening to the song and the part where it starts "dirty bum bum bum"- I just imagine (animated) that it's leon being held back by all of the other past champions as he's reaching out towards a line-up of all the protags (chosens) but specifically (obviously) Hop and Gloria. And it would either cut after paning to hop's determined face OR hop would look back at leon with wide glassy eyes

The whole song would preferably be covered/parody to...ya know match with the events of the games/anime but I still think it would be cool

[virgils-eyeshadow]

virgil lore time

okay so i'm bored as fuck and y'all seem to be interested in one of my very unfunny stories about a kid i hate...enjoy reading it ig????

i moved to texas at the start of 4th grade.

for the first half of 4th grade, i went to what i'm going to call the crocodile school. mainly because our mascot was a crocodile (or an alligator, i'm not quite sure) and also because i was afraid of my teachers just as much as i was afraid of crocodiles. i disliked pretty much everyone in my class because they were loud and annoying. i really only liked this one girl who was waaaaaay too much into her pokemon phase. but hey. it was better than another kid i knew in the 2nd grade who's probably still one of the most devout christians i will ever meet. she used to make me pray with her at least twice every recess, and she constantly tried to pray for me or try and pray my atheism away like it was a disease or something. it's a long story that i could get into later. but the only thing that matters was that i disliked pretty much everyone at the crocodile school. especially that bitch emily mcdonald (first name is fake for privacy but the last name is real) fuck you emily mcdonald and your little fucking oligarchy GOD i hated that girl

and it seems that one 2nd grade girl prayed hard enough for me because, halfway through the 4th grade, my parents moved again. we moved to a house like 20 minutes away, but the house was zoned to a different school that i will refer to as the horsey school. the school's mascot was technically a train and a horse at the same time, but i thought the train looked fucking ugly so i'm calling it the horse school.

so, at the start of january after christmas break, i walked into my first day at horsey school. i liked this class a lot more! the teachers were nice. we had ms. east (fake name), our writing and history teacher, who was the chillest person ever, and also ms. k (i only remember her first inital), our math and science teacher.

ms. east's class was pretty standard. we wrote shitty papers, read basic texas history, practiced writing for the staar (discount sat test basically), and learned bad parodies of songs to help us remember writing tips. i remember "ice ice baby" was renamed "write write baby". pretty standard.

ms. k's class was where shit got weird. the people in it were mostly just. you know. annoying 4th graders. but this class had a few people who stood out to me. i had two friends in this class. one of them vanished off the face of the earth after we graduated, aaaand the other forgot i existed lmao. there was also a really, really smart guy who i think was named thomas. he was the smartest kid in our class and could easily solve any problem thrown at him, but he would take such a fucking weird route that not even my teacher could make sense of (meanwhile i cried over fractions in the corner). and there were your troublemakers, one of which was hunt (fake name ofc).

hunt was good at two things and two things only: being taller than everyone else (except the teacher ofc) and being a little shit. i never interacted with him much, but it was easy to see he was a bastard child. literally worse than the kid that almost got all of our staar scores cancelled through the sheer power of being an idiot. he was your stereotypical popular yet jerk sports kid all the way from the 4th grade. so i did my best to stay out of his way. it worked pretty well.

and then, one fateful day near the end of the school year, these 2 moms come into our class. one of them is hunt's mom, and...yeah i have no idea who the hell the other one was. but they looked like authorities so i walked over there to see what was going on.

it turned out hunt's mom was on the (parent-run) horsey school yearbook committee, and she would be damned if her son didn't get into the yearbook after all the money she raised for the school. but there was just one problem. hunt's mom wanted her kid to take a photo with someone else...but everyone else was either on unfriendly terms with hunt or just too fucking short to fit in the frame. that kid was massive, even in 4th grade.

and then i walk over. i'm one of the tallest people in the class, and since i had been avoiding hunt all year, i wasn't considered a "not-friend" or anything. just a loner. so that makes me the least bad candidate for hunt's yearbook photo. and so they ask me to go take a photo with hunt, and i'm too timid to say no. so hunt and i go stand by a wall, side by side, and it's awkward as fuck. hunt has a shit-eating grin because he knows he's getting into the yearbook, and it's going into his tiny head, meanwhile i'm just internally dying because ew god no i don't want to be in the shitty yearbook. and then the two moms start giggling. i'm super confused but...whatever. they take the picture, thank me, and leave.

skip to the last day of school. everyone (besides hunt, he took the last two days off of school to go to florida early) gets a yearbook and we're all going around, signing other peoples' yearbooks. my 2 friends are flipping through the pages, trying to see if they got in the yearbook or not (they didn't), when they suddenly call me over, laughing. the fuck? i walked over there, confused as all hell, when they point to a picture.

it's me, awkwardly standing side by side with hunt. i'm nervously smiling and standing straight, trying to make myself taller. hunt has a huge fucking bastard grin on his face and he's standing straight too, trying to make sure everyone who sees that photo knows he's taller than me. but then i see it. i finally saw what my friends are laughing at and why those moms started giggling.

the little fucking shit did the bunny ears thing on me in that photo.

and i've hated him ever since!

[scruffyssketchbook]

I got two questions one is do you ever think about making a physical comic book? Two I was just thinking about making a book "more like a adventure story book" "probably not going to happen" about a Pokemon with a similar ability to Miku but with other species of Pokemon other than just eeveelutions but maybe if you're interested we could collab on it or something I could do the story and you can do the art we could split the profits 50/50 or something I'm open to ideas

Author Chan: When I was a kid I wanted to make a book, but that’s impossible due to copyright issues. Ofc. I can claim SSEC is a parody, but that won’t work much.

And sorry but I’m too busy to do a collab with anyone.

[smalls2233]

I was tagged by @nacreousgore!! I tag whoever wants to do this lmao

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

37

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

649,151

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

on ao3, three: overwatch (26), teen wolf (10), and red dead redemption 2 (1)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 

Blood Runs Cold (teen wolf), The Hale Clinic for Troublesome Omegas (teen wolf), Other Arrangements (rdr2), Rage and Tragedy (overwatch), and A Matter of Time (overwatch)

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

My depressing Petopher fic End Will Come or the trauma exploration argentcest fic The Strange Thing About the Argents both were pretty downer endings since they were meant to be depressing fics lol

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

  idk, maybe the lifeguard AU? Summer Loving

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I have a pokemon crossover for TW but that’s the only one I’ve done recently. The most insane was the hetalia twilight parody I wrote when I was 14

8. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah, it depends, I write a lot of werewolves tho so I guess werewolf smut

9. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yeah! If they commented on my fic they deserve a reply

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic? 

LMFAO I’ve gotten a few negative comments and then someone from The Server Who Shall Not Be Named tried to warn people in my comments abt how awful of a person I am bc I made a joke abt allison having herpes and didn’t make my argentcest fic wholesome :pensive:

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yeah! My RDR2 fic was posted to wattpad by some rando lmao

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, it would be cool tho

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really, I worked on Rage and Tragedy with one of my friends tho when it comes to bouncing ideas off of each other and she did art for it

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

McReyes, Steter, or Petopher

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I have so many WIPs dude

16. What are your writing strengths?

I make cool monsters and write really solid action scenes

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I get bored and don’t edit shit lmao

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

War flashbacks to cabron in OW fics

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I think it was unfortunately hetalia back in 2011. Modern times, Overwatch in 2017

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

either of my main longfics, Rage and Tragedy or Blood Runs Cold