#robot flower is not supposed to have normal object limbs

[mspaintobjects]

wait .

[weirdmarioenemies]

It’s a Super Mario Odyssey masterpost!

Sorry to take a break from the Halloween goodness, but it’s the one year anniversary of Super Mario Odyssey! Hard to believe it’s been a whole year, isn’t it? There’s no denying this game is absolutely, how do we put this, “perfect” for a lack of even better compliments, with some vast, detailed worlds, many small fun challenges, and of course, lots of cool new Weird Mario Enemies!

...But today, we aren’t going to talk about enemies at all, because what this game also has is some fantastic Weird Mario Friends! To put things simple, there’s a lot of kingdoms in the game, and most of them have their own NPCs that we all love as dearly as the many friends and foes and spooky tree aliens we’ve featured on this blogs in months past, so sit back, as all three WME mods talk about the wonderful new NPCs we see in this game!

Talking about Bonneters, Tostarenans, and Steam Gardeners is Mod Chikako!

Talking about Lochladies, Shiverians, and Moon Rabbits is Mod F Boy!

And talking about New Donkers, Bubblainians, and Volbonans is Mod Hooligon!

With that out of the way, let’s-a go!

Name: Bonneter

Mario’s grand adventure starts off on an EXTREMELY strong foot when he regains consciousness in a land populated by... g-g-g-g-GHOSTS! The precious Bonneters live in the delightfully spooky Cap Kingdom, where there is rarely a color present besides white, gray, or black, and the whole land is enveloped in a thick fog. To top it all off, the music is simply perfect for a spooky, yet friendly town of ghosts! Also, they all have British accents.

Of course, there is one Bonneter who stands out from the rest, and that is Cappy, Mario’s newest friend! He embodies the ability of the Bonneters to take the form of normal hats and Capture other beings. Yeah, it’s basically possessing people. It’s okay. It’s fun. 

What do you think is under their hat? Is it part of their body, or are they stylish? They don’t LOOK very natural, but Cappy has a few tufts of hair on his hat/head, so the answer is... I don’t know!

Also, there is no spooky-themed area in this game. The only ghosts in the entire game are your friends! Score one for ghosts!

Name: Tostarenan

Here they are... the first ever new characters we saw in Super Mario Odyssey! Remember that Switch trailer way back when? Where we saw like three seconds of Odyssey? Those three wonderful seconds? I do!

Tostarenans are, of course, based on calaveras, the decorative skulls used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. They live in a cozy little town just as colorful as they are, and love nothing more than having fun and eating frozen- I mean, freezy treats!

As I’ve touched upon in their own post, Tostarenans have their own undead version, the Chincho! Which means... these are living skeletons! How does this work? They’re the same shape, so do they have exoskeletons? Again! I don’t know! But wow, that’s two sorta-spooky friend species already, huh? Like we said! This game is perfect!

Name: Lochlady

Lochladies are the world-famous fashion designers found in the Lake Kingdom... a Kingdom whose industry relies entirely on fashion! Peach/Mario’s very pretty wedding dress was made here. According to the brochure, they’re known for their flexibility but also their strength, and that’s kinda funny... they might look dainty, but these fish are strong! 

A fish? A mermaid? They’re really a bit of both. Of course mermaids are their main inspiration, but these things very clearly have scales, right? It’s nice that even the very-human designs in Mario are still a little bit silly. 

Though, I suppose the term “mermaid” wouldn’t really apply to them, since mer comes from the Latin for “sea”... instead, they’re named Lochladies... a loch, of course, being a Scottish word for a lake... Like Loch Ness! And Dorrie, the incredibly-Loch-Ness-Monster-inspired friend, even shows up here. If you ignore the fact that Lake Lamode is a French name, it all works out. 

Name: Steam Gardener

That’s no watering can! Just kidding, it is. But it’s also a robot! And most importantly, it’s a friend! Really just a wonderful combination of things to be. 

Steam Gardeners live in the Steam Gardens! They’re steam-powered! They garden! And they are very good at it. They come in different magnitudes of rustiness, but don’t worry! It seems they can very well go on forever as long as they stay charged. Their heads can be empty, but can also contain flowers or even seeds that they can dispense!

I really love the Steam Gardeners because they don’t really look like a character at all, you know? They look robotic, sure, but there’s not really much of a face or anything. And if you ask me, that makes them even more fun! The flashing lights seem to act as a face, if anything, since that’s what they point toward you while speaking. Oh yeah, they’re even asymmetrical! They’re really just a mishmosh of things that most people wouldn’t consider “cute”, but guess what! I think it’s precious! Sue me! (I would probably win because this isn’t a valid reason to sue someone!)

Name: New Donker

When the first trailer for Super Mario Odyssey came out, one thing that immediately caught everyone’s attention was the New Donkers! Usually, when humans appear in the Mario series, they are very heavily stylized, like ol’ Mario Mario himself! But these humans are hardly stylized at all, looking like your average businessperson you’d pull off the streets of New York in the 1950s!

Seeing Mario interacting with these much less stylized people is as jarring as it is hilarious, with lots of people questioning how this sort of image could be from a real Mario game. This is exactly the kind of off-the-wall wackiness we all appreciate over here!

...Of course, then there’s the question of if the New Donkers are technically human. We know Mario is human! We’ve gotten numerous statements from Nintendo that confirm it, aside from one old advertisement which listed him as “homo nintendonus.” What we really should be talking about is the New Donkers! We have no official source considering them humans, as they are exclusively referred to as “New Donkers” in-game. One statement from Nintendo says the reason Mario looks so different from the New Donkers is because “there’s lots of different kinds of people in the world,” but when the definition of “people” also includes dancing skeletons and garden robots, I think that it can be considered a pretty broad term.

Of course, even then, New Donkers and humans are obviously two very genetically-similar species capable of cross-breeding. How else do we explain Pauline?

Name: Shiverian

I love many many things in this big blue Earth of ours, but chubby seals are definitely way up there. So, these guys? Absolutely... wonderful. I love them. I love their dopey voices, I love their cute widdle faces. I love their cosy little town, and I love that they hold competitions where they literally roll around a racetrack, because they’re just that round and fat!! 

Shiverians are one of the few NPCs you can capture, too! When in Fat Seal form, you can compete in their Bound Bowl races... Humans aren’t allowed to participate, but the brochure makes it clear that only a fat seal man could survive such a race. 

And above all, I love their funky elder. Look at those shades. He’s a cool old man. He’s not like your grandpa- he’s hip!

Name: Bubblainian

I think one thing we can all appreciate here at Weird Mario Enemies Dot Geocities Dot Io is gastropods, no matter what shape or form they take. In Super Mario Odyssey, they take the form of giant French snails with flesh-lips, but better off to be a snail with weird flesh-lips than not be a snail at all, am I right gamers?

I’m glad that they picked snails as their “easy-going beach populace,” (though snails are a good choice for anything, really) but what stands out most about Bubblainians to me isn’t the Bubblainians themselves, but rather, one very particular run-down I had with one during my playthrough of the game!

Bubblainians hide in their shells whenever an enemy gets too close, a small detail I really love. However, one time when I was playing, I was wearing the chef outfit, and was running up to talk to one of these guys when without warning, it hid in its shell! I assume a nearby Gushen might’ve just gotten a little too close, but I just thought it was silly because these French snails were afraid of a chef!

You know, because escargot is a dish in France that’s made from snails and...

Well, it was funny to me at least.

Name: Volbonan

My absolute favorite world in Super Mario Odyssey has to be... New Donk City. I feel that that’s most peoples’ favorite. My immediate second choice, however, is Mount Volbono, and I just love its inhabitants to death. Before I die, you’ll see me laying down, on my deathbed saying “man, I sure love the Volbonans from Super Mario Odyssey” and then I’ll be dead.

But why do I love Volbonans so much? Well, I guess it’s just that I’ve always sort of had an affinity for inanimate object creatures (anyone who’s met me knows how much I love Vanilluxe) and Volbonans are just a perfect design for a fork character! I tried a few shots at designing fork characters in the past, but I made the dire mistake of putting the face on the part with the tines, rather than the handle, a mistake which the Volbonans so excellently fix! Really, I never considered using the tines as limbs, it’s a design that works so well that I’d be cursing myself if the Volbonans weren’t so inherently blessed in and of themselves.

Throw on the chef hats and neckerchiefs, and they go from perfect to extremely perfect, having a design befitting of their hobby of cooking! It feels weird that an entire species has a life focused on cooking, but I suppose that if you’re a giant fork in a land of giant food, there’s nothing better you can do. One of the souvenirs you can buy from Mount Volbono is a set of forks based on the Volbonans themselves! Cute! A little freaky, but still cute!

I think it goes without saying that I want the Volbonans, alongside every other Odyssey NPC, to be playable in the next Mario Kart. Let me race around the whole Mario world as a giant fork or 1950′s (ambiguously) human man!

Name: Moon Rabbit

I am summoned once again from the depths of my cave to talk about Japanese folklore, because I enjoy doing that! The Dark Side stage, unlocked after you beat the game, is also known as “Rabbit Ridge”, and features food-shaped rocks and a whole lotta bunnies... Why? You may or may not have already heard of the story of the moon rabbit (it’s pretty well-known), but in case you haven’t:

According to our friends in the east, the markings of the moon kind of resemble a rabbit pounding mochi with a mortar and pestle. And yeah, I can totally see it. Of course, Mario Odyssey very prominently features hats, and it prominently features the moon in nearly every Kingdom.... and rabbits, naturally, are pulled out of hats! It works on so many levels!

The regular Moon Rabbits aren’t all that talkative, but of course, there are some fairly notable rabbits, too! Yup, the Broodals are from the Dark Side of the moon... which might even be why they look like UFOs when they fly around in their hats. I won’t talk too much about them here, but you’ve gotta wonder... why are they so much more anthropomorphic than their fellow Moon Rabbits? Is this a Goofy/Pluto scenario?

[dykephannie]

REALITY OTP CH. 1

MASTER LIST. PLAYLIST. NEXT CHAPTER. PREVIOUS CHAPTER.

click here for my twitter to receive sneak peeks into next week’s chapter and special behind the scenes info!

summary: Avid fangirl Gracie Green expected that the most extraordinary thing to happen to her at Summer in the City was meeting her long time obsessions Dan Howell and Phil Lester. This proves to be untrue when a fatal virus sweeps through the convention, killing everyone except for Gracie and the very two people she was there for. The odd threesome must travel across Europe to escape an evil tyrant who has claimed the crown for herself, and face not only the dangers of this new, post-apocalyptic world, but the feelings and secrets uncovered by the life threatening journey.

Because after all, it’s the harshest conditions that reveal the deepest truths about us, truths we’re not even willing to admit to ourselves.

important note: This is a PHANfiction, as in a fanfic in which Dan and Phil will enter some sort of relationship other than friendship by the end of the story. Please do not be turned off by the presence of the original character, she is merely a platonic companion of Dan and Phil. Perspectives will switch between the three per chapter. Thank you, and enjoy.

chapter word count: 2.2k

tw: mention of fatal illness

GRACIE

The end of the world generally starts off normal for most people.

They get up, out of bed, get changed, brush their teeth. Go to school or work or get back into bed and they go about their business until the fireballs start raining and their school or their work or their house ends up a heap of ashes for some Katniss Everdeen type to stumble across twenty years after the End only to discover their rotting bones and the useless keepsakes that were the only part of them to survive.

That’s not how it went for me.

Today, August 11th, 2020, had been a day long awaited for almost a year, from the moment I sat at my computer screen after hours upon hours of waiting, eyes burning from the bright light in my dim room, finger hovering over the mouse, refreshing constantly, until the moment of satisfaction finally came. Two tickets to Summer in the City, confirmed for Gracelyn Green. Today, well, it was anything but normal.

I had called Eliza immediately, my squeals echoing around my small room, hers doing the same, if not a bit more subdued than mine. That night I started at my desk, pencil scratching against the paper, etching the outline of the familiar curls and cheekbones, suddenly inspired by the prospect of seeing that face, desperate to make a worthy gift. I remembered I had stopped at the eyes. It was the first time I had realized that those eyes didn’t quite look right. From then on in every drawing I did of him, I was never quite satisfied with the eyes.

That very same first drawing was hanging above my head, those eyes filled in with constellations. I had been staring at it all night, unable to sleep, a cocktail nerves and excitement brewing in my stomach. It was strange how one could plan a moment for six years yet still be caught so off guard when the moment drew near. I picked up my phone, just as the 5:59 shifted to 6:00. It was go time.

The blue morning light was streaming through the gaps in my blinds as I pushed aside my duvet and strode across the room to the outfit meticulously selected and draped across my couch days earlier. I called Eliza, sticking my phone under my cheek as I pulled up my ripped jeans.

“Hello?” my best friend grumbled, voice heavy with sleep.

“You're not awake yet?” I chirped, running a brush through my blonde waves.

“It’s six am, Gracie, no rational person is awake right now.”

“Come on bitch, since when are you rational?”

I heard Eliza sigh on the other end as I shifted my phone back into my hand and wandered down the hall and into the bathroom. My house was quiet save for the squeak of the floorboards under my toes and the click of the bathroom door closing. And the house stayed quiet as I spoke to Eliza behind the door, struggling to get my eyeliner just right and the morning tangles from my hair.

At around 10, Eliza pulled up in her Range Rover, honking loudly.

“Do you have your workout clothes?” my mom called as I pulled the door open extravagantly.

“Yes mom!”

“Because you have an hour of karate and then two of jiu-jitsu on the last day of your convention!”

“I know mom!”

“Have fun, be safe!”

“I will!” I shouted, closing the door behind me and shouldering my heavy backpack, full of two nights worth of clothes. Our parents had decided that 17 was mature enough to stay in a hotel alone, which meant we wouldn’t have to drive back and forth every day of the convention.

“You look cute,” Eliza said drily as I buckled in.

I glanced down at my blossom sweater. “You like it?”

“Definitely a statement.”

“That’s rich coming from you.” I leaned over and knocked the bill of her ProSyndicate snapback resting on top of her coily black hair. “You’re just as much of a total nerd as I am. More, in fact.”

“Yeah yeah, at least I don’t draw creepy fanart.”

“At least I don’t have a Call of Duty gaming channel.”

Eliza stuck her tongue out at me, dark eyes flashing in the sunlight. “How am I supposed to handle staying with you for three days straight?”

“We’ve been friends with me for eight years, I think you can manage.” I frowned. “Plus, my fanart isn’t creepy.”

Keeping an eye on the road, she reached over and pulled out the drawing of a couple lying together on a couch, long limbs intertwined, eyes closed, content and happy. “That’s creepy, Gracie.”

“It’s not,” I insisted. “It’s art.”

Eliza knew it was useless arguing with me. She leaned forward and connected her phone to Bluetooth, playing some old Lana Del Rey song.

“Is this necessary, Lize? Shouldn’t we be getting pumped up and excited, instead of listening to, like, the most depressing artist ever?”

“Well what do you want to play?”

I grinned manically, grabbing the aux cord before she could object and clicking on the playlist at the top of my Spotify.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she groaned.

“What? You like Muse!”

“Yeah, not in this context.”

It took us about an hour to drive to the ExCel Convention Center, and by the time we found parking, we had an two hours to get to the meet and greet line. The line ate up about an hour of that time, but after showing our tickets at the door and ceremoniously draping my lanyard around my neck, Eliza and I were in.

And holy shit was it glorious.

Crowds of people milled about the bottom floor. Some were dressed in dull colors despite the bright hues in their hair and the glittering piercings in their ears and noses. Others wore flowing, flowered dresses and high heeled tennis shoes, accompanied by ambitious cat eyes and smoky eye shadow. There were people in band shirts and onesies, flower crowns and combat boots. Within seconds I spotted a group of squealing kids a few years younger than me, dark black whiskers on their cheeks and familiar faces on their shirts. I was too excited to cringe, too electrified by the sea of people just like me.

And the convention center itself was magnificent. Balconies and floors stuffed with merch booths and advertisements for the newest YouTube Red shows, accosting us with either Jake or Logan Paul’s ads as soon as a corner was turned. I would’ve lived here if I could’ve, even if it meant sleeping uncomfortably close to one of the Pauls’ giant robot faces.

“Where do you want to start?” Eliza asked.

I laughed out loud. She already knew the answer. I made a beeline straight to the merch booth of my choice, bringing Eliza with me.

“Can’t we visit MatPat’s store first? They have a new Game Theorists shirt design and I want to support them but they’re limited edition…”

“Nope, not happening.” We were already in line, and a familiar face was already coming into view.

“You’re a bitch,” she grumbled, drumming her fingers against the table at the booth.

I shoved her shoulder. “Shut up, he’s coming!”

A tall man with light brown hair approached, smiling when he noticed my excited gaze. “Hey Martyn!” I told him. Practice for the real thing, practice for the real thing. “Could I get one of the new posters and a whisker hoodie in a small?”

“Sure thing.” He reached underneath the table, handing me the hoodie and the rolled up poster. I handed him my money.

“A selfie too?”

Martyn smiled and leaned across the counter, pressing my change into my hand as I snapped the photo, sending it immediately to my Snapchat story.

“Thanks dude!” I told him, collecting my merch and striding away from the merch booth, trying to mask the shaking in my hands.

“Did you just call Martyn Lester dude?” Eliza hissed as we walked away. “What are you, American?”

“Please stop reminding me of that, I’m like ten seconds away from dying of embarrassment.”

We browsed the gaming tent next, on Eliza’s not-so-polite request, only for me to watch her pick up everything within sight and promptly put it down after glancing at the price tag. I had a Princess Peach sweatshirt slung over my shoulder by the time she eventually settled on a DS pack with the new Animal Crossing.

“Mario? Really?”

“We’ve played together since the Wii game came out!” I said defensively. “It’s basically our childhood!”

“We never did beat that last world.”

“We should get on that.” I glanced at my phone. It was almost time. “C’mon Lize, we’ve got to get upstairs!” I told her, grabbing her by the wrist again and tugging her towards the nearest staircase before she could even put her change in her wallet.

We ran to the end of the end of the meet and greet line, almost colliding with a smaller girl with a flower crown clutching a colorful book in her hand nervously.

“So sorry,” I stuttered, putting my hand on her shoulder to steady myself.

“Oh wow!” she exclaimed. “You’re sunshineboyes!”

My face heated up. I had been spotted a couple times at VidCon last year, getting identified by the URL of my tumblr blog, which boasted nearly 30 thousand followers due to my fanart. Getting recognized always caught me off guard. I was just a girl that liked drawing YouTubers, not one of the YouTubers themselves.  

“Oh, uh, hey there!” I said. Eliza raised her eyebrows, turning to her phone. “It's nice to meet you!”

“I love your art so much,” she gushed. “Is that some of it in there?”

She pointed at the folder in my hand, I opened it up, flipping to my favorite drawing. The lion filling up half the frame glared back at me, across from the large blue eye and pale face and dark hair on the other side. “Uh, yeah. These are the ones I’m giving to them.”

“Wow!” she squealed. “They're even more incredible in real life!”

“Thanks, you're sweet.” I figured that was closest to the ahhhhh ty! ilysm!! sentiment I could get to in real life.  

“Can I get a selfie?” She already had her camera open.

I leaned my head against hers, smiling widely as she snapped the photo. She opened up tumblr as soon as she brought her phone down.  

“Tag me in that, I’ll follow you!” I told her. Her face positively lit up.

“Oh wow, wait until I tell my group chat that Gracie’s following me!”

I blushed again, turning back to Eliza, who was still glancing down at her phone, amused.

“What?” I hissed.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just funny, that’s all.”

We chatted amongst ourselves for another hour, waiting as the line slowly grew larger behind us, and my hopes slowly grew higher. My heart was nearly hammering in my chest, and I had to concentrate on taking deep breaths or risk hyperventilation. I couldn’t gauge how excited Eliza was in comparison to me. Eliza claimed to only causally enjoy the pair I positively obsessed over. But I didn’t think it mattered. Meeting someone famous on any level had to be exciting.

Even more exciting, I realized as the line started to move, if they had taken up nearly six years of your life.

After another couple hours I could see the corner of a plastic tarp littered with SitC and sponsor decals, two tall, unmistakable shadows cast over it. My heart was lodged in my throat, no matter how hard I tried to swallow it down, and the warm bursts of excitement throughout my chest had turned to cold fear pumping through my veins, a cold fear that no amount of positive meetup descriptions could ease. Because what if mine went wrong? What if I accidentally blurted something out that I definitely didn’t mean to blurt out? What if instead of my totally fine fanart, I packed that one NSFW thing I did and then almost immediately deleted in fear that my mom would do a random computer check? What if I hugged them wrong? Or tripped over one of them and broke my face? Or broke their faces?! I would never be forgiven. I would go down in history as the girl who gave NSFW art to and broke the money makers of --

“Gracie!”

I blinked out of my spiral of panic. Eliza had her hand on my shoulder. “We’re next.”

The girl in front of me had just disappeared behind the tarp, and my heart had just risen even further than I would’ve thought humanly possible. I was so close. Literally a couple minutes and ten steps away from a dream that had been six years in the making…

When a loud crackling noise sounded through the convention center from the speakers in the ceiling.

“Attention Summer in the City guests and staff. Please remain calm. We have just been notified of a fast traveling, fatal virus spreading through London. We are putting the ExCel Center under quarantine. Attention Summer in the City…”

It took just a second to process before the ground under my feet began to spin. Eliza was clutching my arm tightly, nearly cutting off the blood flow with her sharp nails. The shadows were disappearing behind a closed door. Screams were echoing through the center, drowning out the calm drone of the PA system.

But honestly I barely registered the fact that my death might be creeping up on me with every breath I inhaled.

I was just pissed that I wouldn’t get to meet Dan and Phil.