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desultory-novice · 1 year ago

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Have you ever just looked at a unimportant character no one cares about, and you just go

“They could have so much depth”

- the necrodeus anon

...I've been passively trying to come up with a compelling backstory for Brobo of all characters so yeah, I do...

Jokes aside (though I was being serious about Brobo!) I sympathize, Necrodeus fan! Some people might notice that I don't ever seem to draw the Dream Team as a whole? Or even all that much indidivually.

It's not because I don't love them. In contrast, I love them all sooooo much! But I also know that as a fan-artist (1) I don't NEED to do anything for them. They're so important to the, err, "brand" that I'm going to get my daily dosage of Kirby and others being cute by checking Twitter for merch announcements!

King Dedede, who is not as well loved by merch as the other three, gets a lot of fan-made content exploring his backstory, relationships, traumas etc, so I'm feasting on his majesty that way! (...I-is that phrasing too weird?)

It might seem weird to position myself like I'm some champion of giving minor characters depth when I draw a lot of Magolor and Marx, characters who are also showered in love and attention. But as much as I love jester boy, I know that for a variety of reasons, Marx is still in the exact same tier of cameo character as Daroach is, regardless of the difference in merch-love and fan content for the two. Neither of them are going to top the list for "characters to make important in the next Kirby game." That's just facts.

That's why, instead of producing a whole bunch of Meta Knight content, even though I do have ideas for him, I lean towards characters who were important once and are likely never to be important again. (The exception is Magolor, who has been made so important lately, he's likely to stay a reoccurring character. My excuse there is just that I'm biased. (2) Though even I start to feel his spread too much lately? He's trended on JP Twitter twice this last month and I don't even think it was for anything special.)

I LOVE Elfy but I didn't have much for them in the wake of FL's release because Elfy was everywhere I turned. A year later the fire has died down somewhat and I'm ready to write and draw more about Elfy in a relatively collected way. It's weird but sometimes hot news characters can turn into unimportant characters?!

I wasn't here for this, but Daroach was an important figure in two games, back to back! Imagine at that point, he must have seemed like frickin' Magolor to people! Isn't that wild? And the Animal Friends too! They WERE Kirby's friends, allies, family, supporting cast! They were Kirby's everything! ...Fast forward to the years between 64 and Star Allies and it's like... who?

And even then, trying to "spread the love around" is something I have to make a conscious effort to do, and I still know I'm WAY lacking in this department! I'm sorry, my other precious blorbos! Someday I will give you all each the visual masterpiece you are deserving of!

A thought struck me, as I watched a longplay of Kirby's Pinball, Kirby's Blockball and Kirby's Dream Course (three games I didn't play because even as a Kirby fan, young Dess avoided anything that reminded me of "sports.") that there are more "tiers" of Kirby characters than I typically think of!

If you love even the non-Dedede and non-Magolor last bosses or if you love the Dream Friends, you're still eating good. Because in the early games, our "supporting cast" to develop were things like the Poppy Bros, Squishy, Broom Hatter, and Kabu!

And I LIKE those guys! I like the Helpers! I like Wheelie and I like Bonkers! I mean, Chilly, right?! We all love Chilly! These guys were actually treated as kinda important in the older games! (The older manga gave focus to them too.) They didn't have compelling narratives out of the box, but they were staples in Kirby's world!

Have I ever drawn something for them? Have I ever stopped to think up a story about Simirror or Gim...? I'm not trying to guilt anyone or myself. After all, they really don't have compelling narratives, and I think you'd have to do some serious stretching to come up with one. (It might be a little easier for Gigant Edge and Bonkers and Mr. Frosty since they all spent time in the Forgotten Land...)

I think what I'm getting at is that we, who love characters who were important, if only for a single game, are kind of blessed to have that experience. Even if it's only for the length of the Milky Way Wishes sub-game or Mass Attack's main campaign. Our favorites were the shining stars with their own arc: triumphant rise and downfall.

So of course we want to plumb their depths! We got attached! And we're still better off than the Brobo fans or... dare I say it... the GRYLL FANS who dearly love a tough as nails last boss with a great design and... that's it...? We Gryll fans (because I am one of them) have pretty much had to make up their character whole cloth.

(On that note, even Gryll being non-binary is not a 100% canon thing. Gryll's just a character who we know so little about, even their gender is "unknown." There are artists all over the world who have settled on either a strictly fem or strictly masc interpretation for our onion witch. Though I prefer enby Gryll and am actually pretty confident that should they make a future appearance, the official localization will go that way themselves.)

For a long time, what informed Gryll's character was "Gryll introduces themselves with the same line that Marx does. Marx Soul and Drawcia Soul share the same attacks. All three use magic. Maybe these three who have never interacted know each other?!" That is, as far as I'm aware, the "origin" of the semi-popular HC that Marx and Gryll are friends/rivals/pseudo-siblings and both of them know/respect/fear Drawcia.

When Magolor came along and hinted he knew Marx, suddenly that lent some credence to all the magic-users knowing each other. Then Taranza came in with some weird hints of his own about knowing Magolor, and then Drawcia started to get pushed out because she was a little bit less "fun" seeming than the others...?

But I want to highlight that this is all made up!!

And I think it was made up because of people like us. People who still hold fondness for the characters that sparked their imagination and, because they were never likely to appear again, started making connections between other benchwarmers.

:cough: currently in the middle of a lengthy comic connecting Adeleine and Dark Matter Swordsman :cough:

I'm not going to say that we "keep the fandom going" or are somehow more important than people who just draw gorgeous fanart of Kirby. Everyone please keep doing that, btw! (Although it's funny that prolific Kirby fanart master, Suyasuyabi, will often draw these bottom-tier no-personality characters alongside Kirby. We don't get to see what motivates Chip or Blipper but we do get gorgeous visuals of them just living their lives) But our weird little hyperfixations are valuable and do have a purpose!

Still, if we want depth for the non-tier 0 characters, we will need to act on it. We can be helped along by inspiration from other people via weird, off-hand ideas that will make you think "Oh my god, wait what?! Oh, that's PERFECT!"(2) but your brain is going to be the one that makes the most fulfilling connections to you. Thus, my "compelling Brobo backstory" quest.

(I'm currently thinking he could be made by King Dedede? His majesty has a way with robots, after all. Or DOES he? What if there's a person or a place or a Weapon Shop Waddle Dee or Planet Mecheye that his majesty goes to to make his golf robots, blockball robots, and rocket hammer??)

Have I mentioned this about myself? As everyone knows by now, I'm one of the oldies. Not old as in I've been in the fandom forever. I've only been here for like, a year or two? But I am physically older than the rest of the people I know here, at least. But I only started drawing a few months before officially joining the fandom. (I did write fanfic when I was much younger but I hate all of it. Whee!)

Part of the reason I started drawing at my age was when it finally hit me that I would have these utterly brilliant ideas for cool things! "Oh my gosh, this would be SO perfect for X!" And I would patiently wait for someone to make this same connection and draw or write something for it that I could then love...!

:insert crickets chirping:

And...yeah... This could basically summarize my participation in my last fandom. Now, I actually wrote a lot of essays/answereds some ask questions. I didn't just sit quietly in the corner. But no matter how much I emphasized "This is a really cool thing more people should do something with!!" no one, outside of my one fandom friend, ever did.

I began to despair that maybe no talented artist/writer would ever come along and wave their magic brush/magic pen and fill me up with serotonin in accordance with my dreams. And it's a good thing I realized that because, oops, that's actually kind of true?!

Anyway, not to hammer on Dess's Philosopy of Fandom: that you should make the works you most want to see, regardless of how poor a job you do at the beginning but... yeah, actually. That.

Anyway, keep giving depth to characters! In whatever form you can!

I want to say once more to everyone who follows me and likes my art that I learned all this in like... two years. It just takes obsession :cough: dedication. But yeah, also obsession.

Also insomnia and sacrificing your free time to devouring every piece of beautiful art you come across and dissecting it lovingly. You can do the same with fiction, if you lean more towards writing. Not that I am recommending anyone pick up my regemin...

...Regemen? Regimin? RrrghI JUST looked up this word the other day. How could I have forgotten how to spell it so quickly?!

Aha! It's "Regimen."

...Wow. That's not how I pronounce it at all.

(1) Note that I seemed to talk a lot about drawing fan art up above, because to me, that IS giving them depth. When you draw a character participating in a hobby, enjoying a certain food, or talking with another character, you are giving them depth! You're rounding them out and making them feel whole!

(2) Another reason I draw a lot of Magolor is that I follow a bunch of obsessive Magolor fans on twitter who seem to do almost nothing but speculate on things that could have happened to Magolor all day(?) Just the other day, someone wrote something like "What if Magolor didn't immediately threaten to take over Popstar in front of Kirby et al? What if he just calmly took over Halcandra on his own and then realized too late that he couldn't take off the crown?"

I found that idea so compelling that five minutes later, I was scribbling this script down...

So, yeah. I want to apologize because for all of my nattering up there, it really isn't all that fair across the board when you like an unloved, unimportant character because the popular characters ALSO get talked about more, which leads to more sparks of inspiration and opportunities to explore ideas and plumb their depths. And that does suck. It just does. It can drain the inspiration you have to work on growing your favorites and make you feel alone and unloved yourself until the love you once felt for your beloved fictional muse is more like a heart-shaped hole in your chest...

...On the bright side, sometimes you can use another character's popularity to grow the less important characters too! I saw another gorgeous and scary comic (in JP) the other day about Magolor and the Master Crown that treated Dark Nebula as a cruel, dangerous, highly intelligent and threatening rival to both of them!! How awesome was that?!

So yeah, try riding the coattails of popular characters to make your favorite blorbo more interesting! Merry Magoland as much as confirms that Magolor has interacted with a stunning amount of Kirby characters. Use the squishsy wizard egg's popularity for your own benefit! (You could argue that's what I do with Marx all the time! Use Magolor's constant appearances to loop Marx into his activities and keep Marx relevant/give him stuff to do...!)

So, what WOULD the fandom's darling think of X canon character we don't see enough of? Or King Dedede. Or Meta Knight. Make connections between the characters that everyone is devouring up content for and draw people's attention that way!

This is a bit of a silly thing but... my Dark Matter + Adeleine comic-in-progress? The actual base comic did really CRAZY numbers! To the point that it's not even a month old and it's almost as popular as my most popular post! (That being my "moon's haunted" meme I drew when Forgotten Land came out - and oh.my.god it looks so bad?! I want to redraw it just to wipe off the shame... I feel that way about a couple of my more popular pieces tbh...)

Legitimately one of the reasons it became so popular initially was because it featured King Dedede in a sympathetic role. So it got boosted by certain Dedede fans and, not to diminish my own talent, spread way further than it would have on my art/storytelling abilities alone! (To which I'm thankful. And also, I love Dedede myself and love seeing him in serious roles, so it all worked out.)

Anyway, I hope that proved entertaining and maybe a little hopeful?

#Kirby #Kirby series #Magolor #Gryll #Necrodeus #Brobo Kirby #Drawcia #Other characters get name dropped too #Long post #Really long post wow

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