#Blue Stratos

[tvneon]

A very 80's cologne commercial...

[308ferrari]

[theleoisallinthemind]

archipelago by photographer Stratos Kalafatis

[gradienty]

Stratos Science Blue (#07024f to #0868c8)

[nicholask-la]

From March, 2023

[slumbergoblin]

I've had an idea for Lucille for a while, but I finally put a design to her

She's Stratos's 'grew-up-poor-then-became-rich' southern friend from highschool^^

[lafflanes]

ive been working on putting together custom gag panels for my toontown ocs, and i really like how they turned out!

[spoonietimelordy]

Huuuum wrong show xD I was not expecting the tardis to appear in the first chapter of a Life on Mars book but okay x)

[watcheraurora]

I know there probably won't be an Empires S3 and that's genuinely fine

But imagine with me for a minute

It's 1,000 years since the end of Empires S2, and the souls of the rulers are reincarnated yet again, fresh and new as before

And one of them in particular—a blond, brown-eyed young man—wanders the land with a pair of yellow-gold wings folded against his spine

Those wings bear him through the sky, soaring high above anything else. Sometimes he wonders if he could even fly so high that he would reach Stratos, the long-forgotten, mythical land of the gods. Or, according to myths and legends, the last god

With those yellow wings in the sun and his warm blond hair, he's given the name Canary King by his people

He builds his empire from scratch. He plants orchards in a plain biome—a canary's natural habitat. He trades honey and apples with the other kingdoms

He builds homes for his people with his bare hands. He builds his seat of power nearby. A palace for an Avian nestled in the branches of the tallest tree in the world. He made the tree himself, in a way. With the help of a little magic, he grew a sapling into a true marvel. A grand treehouse, high in the air, is where he builds his throne. The perfect fit for a wingéd king, born for the high blue skies

Sometimes he dreams of a homey swamp full of cod and slime. He dreams of gills in his neck and webbed hands. He dreams of a woman with blue skin and pink hair like Lizzie's in a light, flowy dress. He calls that woman sister, in his dreams. He dreams of an elf from the cold, high mountains—an ally. Sometimes he wonders if there was something more there. He dreams of the demon. The corruption.

Other times he dreams of a mesa—badlands. Exact opposite of that homey swamp. Instead of perpetual damp, the mesa is bone dry and blisteringly hot. He dreams of a brass badge on his chest. Tall boots to keep the sand out of his socks. He dreams of a hat to keep the sun off his face. The mesa is empty and lonely. He dreams of enclosed walls meant to emulate the blue sky and clouds the badlands are too hot to form. He dreams of mocking laughter. Shouts of "Toy!" He dreams of strangers appearing in the world, smaller than most everyone else. He dreams of the world the strangers—Hermits?—came from. A Rift in reality. He dreams of a funny old man with a grey beard teaching him to be "better" in his role

He dreams of a man with blue fire for hair, blue eyes with darker blue sclera, and a long black coat rarest of all, but they are always the sweetest dreams. The Canary King wears the brass badge and boots in those dreams, and the blue-fire-hair man isn't like the others—he treats him kindly. Even sweetly. In stark contrast to the mocking teasing of the others

The Canary King dreams he builds the two of them a ranch in the badlands, and then sees the fortress in the frozen norths of the Hermits' world that the blue fire hair man built himself

The Canary King always wakes up from these dreams feeling nostalgia. Like he misses something he never had, or lost something he no longer remembers

He serves his people and enjoys the company of the other rulers, his friends. He pretends he's not haunted by these dreams and the lives that seemed to be contained within them. No one else speaks of reoccurring dreams. No one else seems to notice the thousand-yard stare that he has when he thinks about them

Sometimes Scott smiles at him a little too fondly. Sometimes Joel's teasing needles him a little too deeply and he feels much smaller than he is. Sometimes Lizzie scolds him in a tone that sounds like the older sister the Canary King doesn't have—

And he remembers those dreams all over again

And his wings pull closer to his body, trying to protect him. He seeks comfort in the feeling of his feathers against his hands. He ignores the flashes of red-yellow-and-blue macaw wings on one of the Hermits in his dreams

So he flies. He flies and flies and flies. He sees the world whiz past below him. He flies so far and so fast, he tries to let the wind steal his thoughts and dreams from his mind. The skies are his home even more than the treehouse he poured blood, sweat, and tears into. The skies bring relief. And quiet. And solace. He still hasn't flown high enough to reach Stratos. He doesn't think he ever will

He doesn't want to anymore, with those dreams following him

The Canary King flies for days, barely sleeping, barely eating

He doesn't stop until he sees a mesa below him

It pulls him up short. He circles as he descends, eyes sweeping the land

He lands and kicks at the red sand here and there, thinking himself ridiculous for hoping to see—to find—anything

Until he slams his foot into something

He digs with a shovel and a pickaxe for what feels like hours. He exposes the ruins of an old town. He knows exactly where he's going to find the next building, somehow. As familiar with this town's layout as he is his orchards and the villages he built with his bare hands back home

He finds a small wooden sign with Welcome to Tumble Town! etched into the wood

He drops the sign and takes wing again. He deliberately ignores every swamp he passes over

He flies until he can't anymore. Until his beautiful, strong, yellow wings have no strength left and cannot bear him on the winds any longer. He crash lands in the snow and does not get up

The Canary King expects to freeze to death and never see his orchards or his treehouse palace ever again. He expects to finally be free of the dreams

Night falls. Creepers sneak around the mountains. Spiders spit and skeletons clank. Zombies groan

The world has grown dark, and the Canary King's vision begins to become even darker—

A blazing golden light flares. A voice cries out and then giggles

That same voice asks if the Canary King is alright. A warm hand rests on his shoulder

The newcomer has yellow fire for hair and red eyes with darker red sclera. He has the same face shape, the same nose, the same ears as the man in the Canary King's dreams

The newcomer is concerned and the Canary King is on the brink of unconsciousness. The newcomer promises that he's safe now—he'll be taken care of. It's the last thing the Canary King remembers before passing out

He wakes up in a cozy ranch house

He feels like he's home for the first time since the dreams started

[observerkaine]

Atlas mentioned Kraken once on stream so I ended up doodling fanart because angst. @rhapsoddity your au is really good and awesome.

Oh, what’s this? A secret drabble related to the art below the read more?

Boots stomp roughly against the asphalt as the two sprinted through the city. The skies above were overcast tonight, already having rained once. Sheriff’s breath came out in rough puffs as he pushed through the cold, eyes locked on the villain who continued to call back to him.

“Hurry along, little Cowboy! Where’s all the arrogance you normally have? You’d usually land a hit on me by now!”

“Arrogance? You’re mistaking me for Stratos, pal.”

He bites his lip as he pulls his hat down more onto his head, wind whipping around them threateningly. He can already feel his throat itching from the weather, no doubt a cold or some sort of ailment for wearing drenched clothes.

He roughly had to pull himself out of his own thoughts when Kraken suddenly drops down, swinging his knee up and ramming the vigilante hard in the chest before pulling hard on his lasso and swinging him forward once more for a second hit. Before the Sheriff can catch a second wind, he feels his body suddenly shift as the puddles around surge up and wrap around him, throwing him a few feet off the street and onto the docks.

He struggles to stand up, only for the water still around him to slam him back down, head colliding roughly with the wood.

“You know how rude it is to ignore someone when you’re in the middle of an encounter, dear Sheriff! If I didn’t know any better, I’d have assumed you’d been purposely ignoring me.”

He snarls, opening his mouth to argue-

Before his vision is swarmed with shifting shades of blue in the dark night, the water effortlessly forming completely around his form rather than just around his arms. He chokes as he feels it threaten to flood his throat, his lungs. For a moment, a spike of fear creeps into his chest as he tries to writhe free. He’s trapped, and he can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t do anything-!

He can only hear the water, footsteps… and muffled shouting?

He can feel himself shifted around as the shouting gets louder before suddenly going quieter, before a gloved hand roughly grabs his bandana and jerks him out of the water that flows around the pirate who seems to smile at him as much as is visibly possible with that mask over his mouth.

“Good news! Your involuntary assistance of acting as bait helped me catch that slippery little pest that’s been trailing me all week!”

Sheriff coughs and spits up water before slowly blinking his eye a bit more open. His fear only deepens as his focus is directed to the figure suspended over the larger mass of water.

Pyrolisk’s legs flail and twitch uselessly as he tries to kick at the villain, arms and head restrained and slowly drowning the fire based hero. His mouth moves, but any shouts are muddled out by the intense bubbling caused from his repeatedly doused flames. Any chance he manages to get his hands free, more water waiting below quickly surge up and secure him once more.

“S-Stop! Please! Leave him alone!”

Kraken doesn’t take his eyes off the hero, hand slowly closing more and compressing the water firmer around the hero’s head.

“Let him go! I- I’ll go with you if you leave him alone!”

The water stops and Kraken’s cold eyes slowly shift to him, eyebrow raised in silent question.

“The… the last time we fought, you said you’d wanted me, right? A-And Pyro intervened! So just let him go, I’ll go willingly!”

Kraken fully turns to him now, other hand still prepared to close fully.

“And what’s stopping me from just offing this hero and taking you regardless?”

Sheriff winces before slumping his head down.

“If… If you kill him, then you can’t hold this victory over him. You can’t brag to him or the other heroes that you’re the most dangerous threat around, and he’ll be proof that he’s only alive because you let him live…”

It’s agonizing how long the silence afterwards follows, especially when Pyrolisk’s movements start to slow down. The water is obscuring his face in shadows, no longer sizzling or boiling as his hands start to go slack. Then the water jerks forward and Pyro chokes a gasp as he’s slammed against the concrete, body trembling as it focuses on coughing up the water in his system.

“Normally I’d have let him die, let him sink. But, you do speak a point.”

Sheriff yelps as he’s slammed roughly to the floor, Kraken’s hand now outstretched to him. There’s a flash of pain before a sudden tightness in his nerves and veins, muscles flexing and throat dries as his body slowly rises up. The villain easily steps over the hero, only stopping to kick his back and rest his heel over his spine.

“Let this be a reminder to mind your damn business next time, okay?”

He looks up to Sheriff, a cruel glint in his eyes as he motions with his finger to follow along.

“It’s time to go, pretty boy~ This isn’t a request.”

Pyro weakly watches, with dots of darkness forming in his vision, as the Sheriff follows almost mechanically after the villain, gaze refusing to meet the hero’s. He slowly reaches out, hand trembling.

“D..on…t…”

His vision blurs before his eyes shut, hand dropping as unconscious settles in finally.

[ell-arts]

Here's a little something I've wanted to do for a while! This was made mostly out of curiosity, as a way to speculate on what colour genetics could've influenced the look of characters we've heard of but were never shown (Elli's dad, Bet and Stratos's sister, why Spheria is not yellow like Sunny, etc)

Some of these look pretty empty, so I will revisit this in the future to add more members to each family tree. These trees are also sprinkled with some oc's and my own headcanons.

Here are a few notes/reasonings/headcanons I have for each family:

Spheros:

My headcanon for the Spheros siblings' father is that his name is Exo Spheros, and his colours were quite dark. Both Exo and Rotunda came from families that were very mixed, and as a result, their children came in a variety of colours. Exo's side tends to have darker colours, while Rotunda's side has lighter colours.

Exo has bright red eyes, while Rotunda has green eyes. The clash of these colours caused a range of muted browns and reds in their children's eyes.

Rotunda's hair was white in the show, most likely from old age, therefore I made it so that her natural hair colour is the same as her daughter's hair colour, in order for it to make a bit more sense as to how her granddaughter (Elliptica) ended up with pink hair.

Partial Albinism is a dormant and recessive gene that runs in Rotunda's side of the family. It's a mutation where only the skin of the individual is affected: their skin lacks pigment and turns out white, while their hair and eye colour retain pigment and inherit a mix of their parents' colours. This mutation has been dormant throughout Rotunda's family line, until it showed its face in Betrayus' colours. Since Rotunda's side of the family has lighter colours, the overall lack of pigmentation has a link with this gene.

My headcanon name for Stratos and Betrayus' sister is Radia Spheros. Along with Betrayus, she has very little resemblance to either parent, precisely because of their mixed heritage. There is a little bit of dark red on Exo's side of the family, and this combined with Rotunda's lighter colours made Radia come out as a muted pink. Radia is the oldest, followed by Stratos and then Betrayus.

Unironically, all the Spheros' siblings have hair that is styled in a similar way to their father's.

Headcanon name for Elli's father is Ellipton (Ellip for short). Unlike Radia's side of the family, Ellip's family had a long line of consistent purples and blues, so these genes are stronger. Therefore, Elli looks a lot more like her father than her mother, and this is also why Elli was named after him.

Pac:

Headcanon that the reason why Spheria is not yellow like Sunny is because Spheria and Sunny are only half-sisters.

Sunny's father had an affair with a red woman before he married Sunny's mother, thus Spheria was born a little bit before Sunny. The affair was a point of conflict between Sunny's parents for a while, but eventually things settled down when Sunny was born.

Unfortunately, at some point Spheria's mother passed away and she was placed in her father's care, effectively making Spheria part of Sunny's side of the family. This is also why Spheria still has an accent; she grew up in a different state far away before she moved in with her father and his family.

Despite not having the same mother, Sunny and Spheria still grew up together and came to see each other as full sisters instead of half.

Zac's side of the family are pure yellows, while Sunny's side of the family have a tiny bit of mixing in their earlier ancestry, but the yellow genes are still strong enough for Sunny to have all of the powers and qualities that comes with being a Yellow One.

Cylindria:

The pink highlights in Cyli's hair are 100% natural and not dyed. This is thanks to a common gene that runs in her family, in which streaks of colours are present in their hair. It mostly comes from Starchild's side of the family, as seen in Granny's case. Elliptica has this gene too, inherited from her father's side of the family.

We never saw Moondog's real eye colours because he wears shades/custom glasses, so I gave him light purple eyes.

Moondog's side of the family is also a little bit more mixed, compared to Starchild's family who has been more consistently pink. Therefore Cyli inherited her black hair from her father and her pink skin, eyes, and hair streak gene from her mother.

Headcanon that Granny's real name is Windsong, and "Granny" is just a nickname that she's more fond of.

Additional headcanon that Granny became the first person in the family to think that their naming traditions have gotten a little silly, and so she strongly advocated for giving her granddaughter a "normal" name as opposed to a hippie name, which is how they ended up with Cylindria (her parents wanted to name her Moonchild instead. Cyli was eternally grateful that Granny stepped in to suggest a different name lol).

Spiral:

We literally know nothing about what Spiral's family looks like, other than a vague hint in one of the Chrsitmas episodes. So for now both his parents are red.

Though I am playing with the idea of giving Spiral a step-father, so that might be added in the future.

General Pacworlder colour genetics:

The more a certain colour is present in a family line, the stronger that colour gene is. For example, if the father's line is pure red, and he has offspring with a blue mother with a mixed lineage, then their children have a 75% higher chance of being red rather than blue or mixed.

Overall, mixed families usually produce offspring with stronger genes because of their diverse genetics. The only downside to this is that their mono-colour genes are weakened. The more a particular colour is present in a family-line, the more likely that offspring may get weaker genes in other areas outside of colour because of the lack of diverse breeding. This is seen in old medieval times when royal families married their cousins in order to keep the bloodline "pure" but it resulted in poor health among the descendants. Aside from this example, it is still entirely possible to have a healthy, pure colour bloodline without inbreeding, because Pacworlders with all kinds of colours are broadly populated across the planet.

More to be added in the future :)

[gradienty]

Stratos Navy Blue (#020136 to #00097e)

[moustacherie]

Another IS OmniMech!? This time a Strider -- it's like a Javelin, but even more so. This particular paintjob is nothing special, just more of the Arkab theme that's been touched on in previous posts. The model, however... This is the Strato Minis "Reiver" from their Retrobots line. Technically, it's made for their HardWar game, but c'mon. We all know what this guy is meant to be. Wink wink nudge nudge. Seriously, those guys made some amazing battletech proxies, and I hate hate hate to use the past tense, but their webstore has been mostly emptied out due to a corporate restructuring as they seek out an owner for their IP. Best of luck to them, but their stuff may, for now, be unobtanium.

Finally got one of these guys done. The Charger, patron saint of brass-balled Mechwarriors everywhere.... or maybe you're just on punishment detail. The PGI design that they used for MWO and MW5, of which this is, is just so iconic that it pains me to see the way CGL went for their new plastic Charger coming out next year.

Nothing special to say about the paint job except that Basilicanum Grey may be a bit too dark for a Legion of Vega paint scheme. Let's talk about that BASE, though. Not to toot my own warhorn too much, but damn I'm proud of it. Crackle paint on two sides, layered buildup of technical paint for the riverbed and banks, drybrushing shades of beige for highlights, ProAcryl pale ivory down the riverbed and then a mix of blue and green AMMO Crystal Acrylics (bit heavier on the green than I intended), gloss varnish on that, then 2mm Gamers Grass tufts mixed with terrain flock lets the scene just bloom.

[slumbergoblin]

Redesigned Oscar's siblings for (hopefully) the last time!

[lafflanes]

more up-to-date refs of my main toon ocs' main outfits in-game, since i tweaked some of their outfits a bit! the creative liberties used in their designs as ocs are still p much the same though!

[linkandorf]

Mr. Shine & Mr. Bright!

Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright are, collectively, the boss of Butter Building in Kirby's Adventure. Mr. Shine is the moon, and Mr. Bright is the sun. They aren't the actual sun and moon, in fact we even visit the moon in Kirby's Adventure, but they definitely have some sorta powers that effect the time of day in some way, maybe just in the nearby area. Their boss fight is really creative, as the two of them switch off fighting you directly, while the other one stays up in the sky invulnerable and does some more simple attacks. They have separate health bars, so you have to take them both down to win the fight. They reappear as a boss in Dream Land 2, where their fight is basically the exact same, although they have this really cool eclipse attack where you have to stay safe in the dark area or else you get blasted by Mr. Bright's sunlight. The two of them also appear as a boss in the Kirby Mass Attack sub-game Strato Patrol EOS, where they actually fuse together into some sorta weird hybrid form, which I'll draw as a separate character when I get to it. They've had a few other cameos here and there, as most Kirby characters do, but haven't appeared as an actual boss fight in quite some time. I think they make for a really charming duo though, and would love to see them return for real!

Also, there's a few Alts I made for these guys, first depicting the Sun and Moon forms when they switch off in battle.

And then there's also some alts for Mr. Shine depicting him with the blue outline he has in his in-game sprites in Nightmare in Dream Land and Mass Attack.