#sm has been going more downhill now in the design without her i used to defend their design department so much

[jester-dragons-aus]

Ah fuck I've done it again

Amalgam AI AU

I've seen some AUs about the humans being AI instead of Caine and I thought that might be the simplest way to get this monstrosity to happen with a massive glitch without abstraction playing a part.

I think I just really like horror AUs and doing stuff like that is just so fun so I made another one with a better title than "Horror House" cuz c'mon what the hell does that mean lol

The only characters I don't have designed currently are Zooble, Caine, and Bubble but I'll add them soon. Caine will be a human, Bubble could be something to help him out and what not.

Inspired by AUs like Sm-baby's and The Horror Circus AU, but like, different ofc.

Think this: the game wasn't originally supposed to be a horror game, just a game you go through for fun. Like Undertale, I guess? But not quite

[WARNINGS: LOTS OF EYES/ARACHNID IMAGERY, BODY HORROR, EYESTRAIN]

So first and foremost, I think people would wanna see Pomni, though Jax was the first to be designed.

Pomni is supposed to be some sort of anti-virus or some sort of protecting thing. Supposed to fix bugs and glitches and prevent viruses from getting into the game. Like a firewall, I guess? I tried to make her look like "right/wrong" esc thing. She was the last to be designed and it was like 1 am when I designed her. I had no clue what to do with her, I'll be completely honest.

Story wise, she'd be trying to find a way to undo this massive glitch and get the game back to normal before she can even rest. Once Caine pops up to try and fix the game from inside, as a dev himself, she does her best to protect him and help him fix the game.

No there is no shipping in this AU, they're just helping each other basically survive. They might become friends over time but nothing more. :V

Next up: Ragatha and Gangle! I actually really like Gangle's design but Ragatha definitely needs a few tweaks I think.

Ragatha, before this massive glitch, would have been an NPC that would help a player out at the start but end up getting lost after a certain point, like a tutorial. She was the most caring character in the game before everything went down.

Gangle used to be someone who ran a little theatre thing in the game, as I've seen from other AUs and took inspiration from, but she's usually nice no matter what mask she has on. More arms means she can help more people at once, right? Game mechanics wise she was like a little shop keeper for costumes if they're needed and she can help with newer mechanics on stage if something new is added. Friendly NPC, you know? Love her design, too!

Now for the first two to be designed, Jax and Kinger!!

So Jax was like a reoccurring villain, I guess. Always trying to make the player quit the game or just scare the shit out of them, despite him not being very scary himself. He's more played off to be a joke character, if I'm honest, always failing with his antics and what not. It's part of the code! I actually like his design, small lil paws and just so shapey over all.

Kinger was like a final boss, I guess? The scariest of all of them at that time. He was a king, ruling over his pawns and such, all of which were also bug themed! I love making Kinger bug related it's so fun. He's a big softie in reality but hits like a train if you ever went against him. He had terrible vision despite all of his eyes and was very slow despite the amount of legs.

Now for what everyone has been waiting for.

The reason for the AU title.

The MASSIVE glitch that caused everything to go downhill.

The Amalgam.

I still think it needs a few tweaks here and there but this is one of four concepts I've had for it.

One time all four of these characters were together, which was relatively rare but possible, a glitch happened in the game. Pomni doesn't know where it started from and none of the game devs understand how it happened, but it did. Some devs think there's a hacker. A massive glitch pulled those four characters together into one terrifying being, always hostile and destructive. All the code of the characters were merged into this thing and somewhat scrambled. The game has now been broken to where once you're in, you can't escape until it's fixed, yet no one knows it, which is why Caine went in.

So much has happened and it's still being fixed, but a hostile blob of characters constantly attacking whenever it's near? It will be hard to fix.

It seems to be guarding something.

Concepts for the amalgam:

You can see in the first one I was going to put Zooble there but I still need a good design for Zooble. Let's see what they'll be.

[littlecafe]

!!definitely, no company operates independently if 80 something percent of it is owned by a parent company, its just basic business. and they just released a shoot video for their next boygroup trainees? the timing is just very off

oh ya i agree completely the graphics have significantly downgraded since merging, nuests last album cover was so weird (but at least there was more effort in those teasers) and it was the same with their merch too...and now this one its just black text and pixelated numbers fdhsks

i saw theories this album was supposed to be for april...but now its a a disbandment album. even the concept to me doesnt match what a goodbye album would look like from them? the blank white previews really do make it clearer that they werent ready :(

ahh youre not wrong the two who resigned had the most schedules going on as of recent, so it made sense to me at first when they said the other three didnt sign...

(thanks for ranting w me i appreciate being able to talk about it >< ♥)

exactly!! i honestly can't believe there are people that don't see or understand that, even if this is kpop it's business and business runs the same everywhere

did they really??? a new boy group...wow.....oh wait i just searched it up i've seen this group mentioned before didn't they have a show or something i remember seeing some lyrics controversy but i won't derail this anymore lol but the timing sure is...something even if it's just a coincidence it's still rubbing some salt into the wounds....

even before the merger pledis has always been lazy with design lmao either that or they just don't budget a lot for it if they're paying someone for these (but what else is new, pledis is cheap) which reminds me of a nancy unboxing i watched a while back (i had to go find it, linked to timestamp), she mentioned that a fan found out one of svt's album color version was literally a direct inverse(?) of another one aka there was zero thought being put into color scheme....

i honestly try to erase romanticize's design choice out of my head like i gasped the first time i saw their teasers come out with that pls sakjhfdksfhs it was so ugly but i feel like another group had some similar design with some atrocious font spacing but i can't remember now i can only think of svt's the ode album but that "minimalistic" design would be more in line with what they did for nu'est the nocturne album which were also both......an interesting take on minimalism, font focused design (nct did something similar with their regular irregular era posters which i found much cuter)

honestly with pledis designs there's no vision which makes them pretty unmemorable, they're lucky the boys are pretty enough to make it work lmao their best work for me would be happily ever after album along with the website they made for it

yea...i've seen people suspecting the 10 year anniversary promos were supposed to lead up to the new album in april, it's so obvious this album was still in the works and got repurposed to be a goodbye album bc you're right the concept just doesn't make sense at all and they virtually have no design shdsfsdfdsf looking at the listed album goods too it's like nonexistent compared to any of their other album releases, they were really not ready to put this out

ugh...ok i thought so....this is 100% my cynical side speaking now that i've had more time to sit on it but i really don't like how they somehow managed to keep those with higher amounts of individual schedule (and possibly individual appeal) while the others just magically decide not to renew, sounds like someone was trying to min max profits, since despite nu'est doing well in korea, there's no doubt that managing 2 successful solo acts will be easier and less costly than kpop group promotions

also i was just so shocked jr would be one of the ones to not sign like maybe i'm delusional but that was like..did i read this wrong?? i just don't believe if he was given a proper chance to stay as nu'est that he would refuse that

but yes ofc!! it's nice to have someone to talk it out with since the situation got so ridiculous so fast, we all went from shocked and sad to collective frustration practically overnight lol