#discussions: concept art/development

[firadessa]

I sometimes question Pixie Hollow’s geography when it comes to the book continuity… Like where exactly is the Home Tree located on Neverland? Or how much of Neverland do the fairies occupy?

The Pixie Hollow in the movies feels more like a dimension separate from Neverland, that I sometimes forget that Tink and her friends live in Neverland.

I've thought about this too! Pixie Hollow's geography and where exactly it is located in Neverland is a very messy part of the lore throughout most of the continuities. So this is gonna be a long answer

In the books the Pixie Hollow with the home tree, it's supposedly in what I think is "a clearing", like behind some foliage. In the third guide book "The Hidden World of Fairies" which is made up of book and movie canon (a lot of elements from the books and movies together) we see that Pixie Hollow is located behind a leafy clearing somewhere in Neverland.

According to this map, Pixie Hollow is located towards the right of Neverland next to Skull Rock and Mermaid Lagoon

However, it's still sort of complicated!

In In the Realm of Never Fairies, we have some illustrations of areas that seem to be around Pixie Hollow- that seem to be quite vast and empty, including concept art.

Here, we have a lovely concept drawing of Tinker Bell near a waterfall- note the waterfall, it will become important later

This is the original illustration of that image:

Here's an interesting illustration with Havendish Stream, the dust mill, and several mountains:

We also have a detailed explanation of Prilla's arrival in Quest for the Egg and world building in the trilogy which suggests it is located in the island somewhere near the mountains, but also somewhat close to the Lagoon (after all Soop could flood Fairy Haven/Pixie Hollow) with the cove seeming close- but also still a several days journey for fairies, with it taking at least couple hours to get to both locations. It can be assumed Torth Mountain where Kyto resides is close to the fairies, as well as the Tiffens which are creatures that trade with the fairies unique to the Levine books. A fire almost destroyed Neverland (Kyto I believe) and Mother Dove survived and made the island magical. So I have an idea that it's close to the mountains, but still on a flat terrain. In the forests of Neverland, in like the center leaning a bit to the right. Likely the "heart of Neverland"

In the books, I think it is also heavily implied that the Dust Mill is further away from the Home Tree than it is in the movies.

It's very interesting you say that "The Pixie Hollow in the movies feels more like a dimension separate from Neverland, that I sometimes forget that Tink and her friends live in Neverland." Because, in the original version of Pixie Hollow it was a distinct place behind a secret portal in Neverland, and had a unique apperance different from Neverland! They try to connect it to the book lore, and the story was even on the website at one point. In this version, Pixie Hollow is located in the waterfall in the middle of Pixie Hollow, and the waterfall is a magical portal. However, the idea of Pixie Hollow being located behind the waterfall- even if it is not magical, is scarcely used in the final canon. I mean in the Pixie Hollow game, there is the speedchat phrase "See you around the waterfall!" for a goodbye phrase and maybe the waterfall is mentioned one or two times in Never Girls. Personally, I'm very biased to this design of Pixie Hollow because I really like the style and how it feels both separate and unique to Neverland. It shares the design of Neverland but is still it's own unique and original place.

Compare to the final version, which takes a lot of cues from the books, down to the Pixie Dust Tree being modeled from the home tree. Design wise I don't hate it, but it always felt a bit "off" to me and rushed. (very likely wise, considering the timeline of the movie's development)

Ironically, it's said by the director they used a lot of shots of the mountains (Discovering Pixie Hollow DVD documentary) to give some sense of Neverland in Tinker Bell. But Tinker Bell, imo- also has felt too different from the world of Neverland and also not similar enough. And a lot of that art was not from the final version of the film!

But when it comes to the movies, we can get an idea where Pixie Hollow is located based on certain scenes in the films- which I believe is more similar to the books, a forest area- but still close to the falls and closer to the coast of Neverland. It is very hard to see where, but I have an idea.

Very close to the center and the falls, but also an elevated forest area as we can see from Tinker Bell's arrival. So the waterfalls were relevant in some ways.

When they leave Pixie Hollow to go to the Mainland, this is the direction they are coming from.

In Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure, she goes north and this is what she sees behind her when she says "Goodbye Pixie Hollow, I'll miss you."

This shot to me, shows the strong differences of Pixie Hollow and Neverland. How in some cases, they went too realistic imo...

TLDR- So, Pixie Hollow's location in both the films and the books (as well as everywhere else) is quite messy to me! I get there's some mystery in not knowing where it is, but there isn't really any indication besides "in the forest clearings of Neverland". Very odd to me that they never directly say where Pixie Hollow is located- anywhere besides a few random places. Also there's the implication that the seasonal meadows of Pixie Hollow are a speck compared to the full world of Neverland in the films, which is surprising to me. It's magical and yet sort of surreal in some ways too I guess hehe

But I overall, prefer the concept movie designs for Pixie Hollow compared to the movie designs, as the design feels very intentionally crafted. The idea of Pixie Hollow being hard to find makes sense, so I wish the movies had it be behind a clearing of some sort as well and not in the middle of the mountains/forest

[firadessa]

More crown anaylsis:

My working theory is that the second crown is actually the crown for autumn like Sarena suggested. But was never supposed to be the "normal one" she wears

We see from many concept arts and even a deleted scene that the fall scepter was originally going to be a crown

Not only that, this is a piece the original concept art of the mirror of encanta. One of the plot points of the movie was that pieces of the mirror would be used to rebuild the scepter, same would go for the crown right? LT and TB were also being worked on the same time, explaining on how the crown could end up in Tinker Bell, which I'm thinking it did during the Vidia confrontation scene

This is from a scene where Blaze returns home instead of going to Pixie Hollow

Now the PHG crown looks very detailed right?

Well, the crown is so detailed and ornate- I can't believe I missed it because I was so used to the so called "default". Well there is plenty of reason that this crown can look like this. The original working title for the movie was "Race through The Seasons" and it was originally a full length film, the 5th and final one before it was condensed for TV. I believe every movie prior, which should have included SoTW, would have had a different design. However, the directors lost interest, and there was general confusion regarding the crowns. Only PHG got a crown design for the special.

I believe it was supposed to be a more "seasonal" design, it could also be a a design reject from Lost Treasure.

Another interesting thing is this magazine or some source I read mentioned Clarion's first crown is the "Arrival Day" crown and the flower crown is the "Spring Celebration" crown. However, I am inclined to believe that her first crown was always supposed to be her normal crown design was always supposed to be the Arrival Crown. This crown features a white floral motif, her favorite flower is white cala lily and symbol of her regal status. I believe this crown, was always meant by other artists to be a regular everyday crown, though somehow the autumn crown/swirly design ended up being the regular day crown.

A weird thing about Clarion's ROB/pre final design was that it had no crown but a necklace instead, making her seem like she's more humble. It would make sense for the notes to say, make it more regal, using the books lily thing as inspiration. Many of her merch at the time seems to have the pointy crown or the Ring of Belief style, meaning the Arrival crown could have always been the normal one. Maybe that's too much thought into a small difference but still. Last one is the edited website image

On Queen Clarion’s crowns. After Mary and anon had mentioned it, I had to look for all the crowns she’s worn in the movies and do some quick analysis!

The first scene, Tinker Bell’s arrival, takes place in Winter, and Queen Clarion is wearing a glowing white crown. Later, when she attends a review of Spring preparations, she changes into a flower crown which she keeps for the rest of the film (and presumably the season.) In the next movie, the fairies are preparing for Autumn, and Clarion again has a new tiara. Finally, the Pixie Hollow Games special introduces one more crown, and this just so happens to take place in Summer.

Was this coincidental, that we only see Clarion wear certain crowns in certain seasons? Or was it an intentional design choice? I don’t know, but I don’t care. My headcanon is that she has a tiara for each season.

This would solidify the timeline of when the rest of the movies occur, which is something obvious for the first few films…TB = winter-spring, LT = autumn, GFR/PHG = summer…But not so much for the others. The next three films take place only in Never Land and we aren’t told what season the fairies are bringing to the mainland.

But the answer is hidden in Clarion’s crown! She wears her Autumn crown for the rest of the movies.

We can even prove this at least as far as SotW, judging simply by what’s going on in that movie. The winter fairies are all in Pixie Hollow, practicing their frost and packing snowflakes into baskets to take to the mainland. They’re in Autumn, preparing for their upcoming season.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[king-crawler]

Short excerpt from the art book about Vanellope's kart🥺

[firadessa]

I'm still thinking about her...who were you... Rani???

We're all still bitter 😭

[weirdmageddon]

this is the biggest pokemon leak weve ever seen. holy fuck.

a gamefreak employee got phished in a dev portal. i feel really really bad for them. but at the same time so much of this is amazing. i love cut content. i love seeing the process of making stuff. so i have mixed feelings, but i’m going to set that aside.

ive been here for multiple beta leaks since the spaceworld gold demo in 2018 and the diamond and pearl beta leak somewhere after that. this is by far the most intensive leak of beta pokemon stuff ive seen.

source code and beta builds for gens 3, 4, 5, and later 6 and 7. it is MASSIVE.

there is so fucking much and you can see coverage here

edit: if you dont have twitter (elon is a shitbag i dont blame you) you can go on r/PokeLeaks

this document from junichi masuda made in 2005 is the highlight for me, the symbol used in the hgss arceus event. it seems the legendaries are like a greek pantheon of deities

but we got more

internal development and discussion. universe creation lore, character profiles (e.g. skyla is a sexy latina pilot inspired by jennifer lopez and isabella fontana), never before seen designs, seen-before designs (latiken had a fucking sprite!), concept art, gen 3 had some darker looking discarded dev art. WHAT IS THIS IT RULES

here are compiled beta sprites from gens 3, 4, 5

[jesncin]

Thinking about Disney and how we talk about Cultural Representation

(concept art by Scott Watanabe)

Old essay originally written on Cohost in November 2023. With additions.

With all the promo stuff about Disney's upcoming animated film Wish, I can't help but think about Raya and the Last Dragon again. I spent a year intensively researching things about that movie and the discourse surrounding it for a series of videos on Xiran Jay Zhao's channel, and oh boy did that reveal a lot about the current way we talk about cultural representation in casual media criticism.

Lately we've grown a habit of looking at signifiers to culture, things like a cultural dish, a nod to a martial arts style, a piece of clothing, maybe a hairstyle, a weapon and so on, and then projecting a bunch of intentions onto the work regardless of authorial intent. I witnessed this a bunch of times in discussions surrounding Raya and the Last Dragon.

You basically get a bunch of 4d chess-style justifications for the lazy implementation of culture in Raya.

random examples cuz there's too many to name:

The movie will do something like make the leaders of the villain nation women, and people immediately assumed it was some kind of bespoke reference to Minangkabau matriarchical society.

the art book of Raya specifically stated that they purposely misplaced things as a stylistic fantasy choice "we could take something that is known and place it in an unexpected location, like coral in the desert and cacti in the snow". But when people saw a water buffalo placed in the desert they assumed it was some super clever environmental story decision.

The movie will tell you it includes things like Borobudur, Angkor wat, Keris, and most people will take their word for it without hesitation. Never mind that Southeast Asians could barely recognize these nods to our culture through how amalgamated the designs are.

(early concept art by Scott Watanabe)

Moving forward, I think we need to talk less about "what" parts of a culture are being represented in these movies, and more about HOW they're being included, we need to ask:

What is this piece of media's relationship with the cultures it represents?

Because Raya and the Last Dragon is not a cultural movie, it's a monolith film pitched and written by white people and a Mexican director with 2 SEA writers added later in production to avoid backlash. Culture serves the purpose of aesthetic set dressing in the film, as opposed to something that informs its themes and characters.

it wasn't even initially pitched as a Southeast Asian movie. The white writers who pitched it were going for a vague East Asian sci fi fantasy story under the working title "Dragon Empire". Southeast Asian culture was an aesthetic change added much later.

This is what happens when a corporation tries to put representational value on a shallow aesthetic. Because of the way Disney constantly marketed Raya as this big authentic cultural film, it primes its audience to read cultural intention in the most benign details. And when we get lost in the details, we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Contextualizing Cultural media criticism

(visual development art by April Liu)

We need to start demanding more context in our analysis. The next time we see a reference to culture in media we consume, take a step back and ask what purpose it serves in the narrative. And most importantly!! What Is Its Relationship With The Culture It Represents? We shouldn't just accept things at face value.

start asking yourself,

through what lens is this cultural dish and its spicy flavors being presented to us? Are the customs surrounding the food being respected?

If martial arts or dance is represented, how is it translated in the adaptation? Are you getting generic hollywood-fu or are you seeing specific movements with purpose and motivation? Are the philosophies or spiritual contexts of these traditions present in the text?

Are the clothing, hairstyles, and presentation of the characters being de-yassified through a colonial filter? Is the non-conformity of the cultures' different framework for gender presentation being adjusted to fit a more recognizable binary?

If language is present, what role does it serve? Is it presented as other through being exclusively used by villainous beings? Is it being made a monolith as one "non-English" language?

is this temple actually a place of worship or is it just a set piece for a goddang Indiana jones booby trap action fight sequence

This way, instead of unquestionably defending a piece of media because a character wore a traditional outfit one time, or because some characters took their shoes off at a temple, or because there were Arnis sticks in that one fight scene, we can approach the text with a more nuanced and holistic understanding of how culture informs narrative.

To quote Haunani K. Trask (author of From A Native Daughter):

“Cultural people have to become political… Our culture can’t just be ornamental and recreational. That’s what Waikiki is. Our culture has to be the core of our resistance. The core of our anger. The core of our mana. That’s what culture is for.”

[asktehkoopz]

HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY TO ME! 🥳

What a crazy decade it’s been, too! I’ve met a lot of good friends, people I still talk with daily and hang out with in person to this day! Despite things not being perfect in the Nintendask community (as I learned much later, haha, I kept in my lane), I still personally cherish the years I spent making art for this blog. It was my passion project for a while, but unfortunately it slowly drifted away from my grasp.

I can’t say if I’ll ever update with the tenacity that I once did. In fact, I can almost guarantee I won’t, but I like being able to come back here every once in a while to drop some new art sometimes. :]

I had a lot of big swings that I wanted to do in regards to the koopz’s arcs, some MUCH more fleshed out than others (namely Lemmy, Wendy, and Morton’s were lacking), and I’m almost positive I won’t be able to get to them in full.

So how about a big spoiler dump, huh? Every plot point, every plan, every character concept that was going to occur will be beneath the cut! If you wanna wait on me to maybe get to them over the course of another decade, please, by all means don’t read beyond!

If you’re hungry for what was cooking upstairs, then scroll on! And thank you guys for the outpouring of support I’ve constantly gotten with this blog! 💖 (Also for real, this read-more is mega long, so seriously prep yourself. Here’s the google docs version that might make it easier to read! If you have any questions about the plot stuff, uh. Maybe I'll answer them OOC?)

Also bonus comparison images! EW!!

TL;DR: The prophecy was a sort-of fake created by Kamek! It started out real, but after it officially stopped existing, it was perpetuated on accident/for emotionally selfish reasons! It didn’t start out that way when I planned the blog, but it eventually became that over the course of development discussion with BoomPom mun! Eventually the koopz were gonna give up their star child prophecy magic nonsent and live their lives how they wanted to. The end!

THE LONG VERSION

Version 1.0 of AskTehKoopz (then AskIggyAndTehKoopz):

The star children prophecy was loosely based on the Yoshi’s Island DS concept of “star children”. Each koopaling (and Bowser Junior) were imbued with an inherent, powerful magic when they were born to help them take over other kingdoms (as mentioned in their various bios). This changed both their ability to inherently harness magic as well as changing their species, explaining their strange features, specifically their pointed ears and wildly colored hair (the pointed ears admittedly did come later during the wedding arc).

The koopalings had always been planned to be unnatural magikoopas, but at the beginning of the blog’s inception, it was not concrete what exactly they each were. This will be covered below.

Version 2.0 of AskTehKoopz:

If you look in their bios, you will see that they are each noted as “Magikoopa(?) + (Where they were born)”. This, along with their last names, were a hint as to their original species. This was added circa 2017 when their bios/references were finally updated.

Originally they were the following:

Roy - Bullet Bill

Iggy - Toad

Morton -  Hammer Bro

Larry - Yoshi

Ludwig - Koopa Troopa

Wendy - Bombshell Koopa

Lemmy - I don’t knoooowwww

An additional twist had been introduced during this stage as well:

This set of koopalings (and Junior) were not the first set of prophesied star children.

Affectionately named “The Alpha Koopz”, these are what you might know as the DiC cartoon koopalings: Bully, Cheatsy, Kooky, Kootie Pie, Big Mouth, Hip, and Hop. These seven, along with a young!Bowz were the first set of star children. Back then, Bowz did not see them so much as kids he needed to take care of. Moreso they were “guys who he’s forced to do magic alongside”, despite Kamek’s pressure to be more attentive to them as the eldest. He was considerably more reckless back then with his power as well.

As aggressive and mean and selfish as the blog koopz are, they don’t surpass the sheer annoyance and danger the alpha koopz put themselves in, mainly due to Bowz’s negligence.

And because of this unfettered, reckless behavior, they managed to doom themselves to a “Game Over”, shattering the prophecy and allowing their set of star child powers (along with Bowz’s) to shoot off and embed itself into the next set of vessels. This is also why the blog koopz are “in the wrong order” with regards to their age.

In addition to gaining these star child powers, echoes of their memories and actions and dynamics exist in some of the koopz tendencies:

This is why Lemmy gravitates towards Iggy (Hip and Hop’s closeness). Cheatsy is why Larry is a kleptomaniac. Kooky is where Ludwig’s “crazy laugh” comes from. Kootie Pie is where Wendy pulled “Daddykins” from.

How did they game over? As of right now, it was a mundane and tragically, incredibly avoidable fate, one that echoes Bowser’s many in-game endings: Bully simply fell off the roof of the castle, plunging into the lava moat below. The alpha koopz had little restraint and they encouraged one another to constantly do dangerous things. Walking along the giant chains of the castle without his wand was one of these dangerous things.

If Kamek had had the power to*, if Bowz had desired to see them as more than nuisances and instead helped them learn restraint, if they had realized that despite their immense power, they weren’t invincible, they most likely would have been the koopz that were blogging.

Whomp whomp!

(*I don’t have a good place to stick this, but to put it shortly, the reason Kamek had to be hands off with the alpha koopz is because he used to have a place in what was basically a high magikoopa council. He was assigned to train Bowz to fulfill the prophecy when he was first born with his star child powers. Bowz was NOT a very good student and put himself and many others in danger as they searched for the other 7 star children. When the council hit their last straw, they nearly elected to execute Bowz, who was a child at the time, and start the process over. Kamek traded his spot in the council to spare him, as he had grown attached to Bowz. Bowz overheard this discussion and shaped up quickly. Kamek has never found out Bowz knew of this deal.)

Version 3.0 of AskTehKoopz:

All of the above in 2.0 still happened, however there is now an additional twist.

The prophecy’s a lie! Sort of!

This one was on BoomPom mun. I joked about an article referring to Kamek as a koopaling and unfortunately we came up with something tragic:

Kamek was ALSO part of a set of koopz BEFORE the alpha koopz! Whoa!

Back nearly 100 years ago, there was supposed to be a prophecy. It wasn’t Koopa Kingdom specific, just a general “Well whoever can harness these powers will be able to take over”, it just happened to be the Koopa Kingdom that found out about it first (they were a group of some mix of archeologists and scientists, I don’t remember fully*). It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. These powers would awaken and they HAD to find someone to use them. Kamek, along with these 7 other kids/teens, were given the opportunity of a lifetime to essentially be vessels for this crazy power to help bring this prophecy to life (literally signing their souls away. The powers NEEDED a soul to latch onto and a body to stabilize itself with).

(*I think that BoomPom mun and I vaguely discussed they might have been the same people who ALSO were the ones who created the cores for the splorches that eventually became Sol, Simon, and Scotty. Yet another experiment that went terribly wrong. These guys are on FIRE. 0-2!)

So Kamek and these 7 formed a really tight sibling bond pre- and post-power. But uhhhh you really shouldn’t be giving crazy raw magical prophecy power to children. Absolute bonkers idea.

Despite their extensive training, it didn’t end well. They genuinely worked so hard to try to be the ones to help bring empires to their knees, but they were only children. I didn’t have a specific incident, all I recall was that the power was WAY beyond their control, and all 8 of them died.

Except.

Through some fail-safe Kamek set up prior to their last hurrah to revive all 8 of them (he felt something might go wrong when they did what they did), Kamek was revived. Alone.

Left in the ruins of what their own powers did to them, Kamek had to live with the guilt that he lost the prophecy, but more importantly, he lost his family, too. Unless he did something about it.

So, despite what a terrible idea it was and how dangerous it might have been, knowing these powers were linked to his sibling’s souls, he decided “I know the prophecy was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But I’m gonna make it happen again somehow. I do not care.” And with the star child powers he still had, he tried to revive them again. Despite the blood, sweat, and tears poured into the ritual, it didn’t work.

Years passed, he’s on the magikoopa council and eventually, after finding kid!Bowz, he’s like “...Hey wait a minute, I weirdly recognize you.” (Magic vibes, general demeanor, etc.) He discovers wow! The prophecy is back on! I did it?! I DID IT?! Soon he recognizes slowly that each of the powers/souls got transferred to a random kid they need to find.

So they find the alpha koopz (i.e. cartoon koopalings) and uh. Yeah they’re all bratty asshole versions of his found family, but well. It does bring him a strange comfort knowing they’re slightly living on regardless. However Hip and Hop are weird. Like. Finishing each other’s sentences, acting in tandem, etc. It’s extremely bizarre. And he’s not really sure WHICH of his siblings Hop is?

Unsure how, but he finds out oops, after restarting the prophecy for a second time, his star child powers got sort of weird because KAMEK WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD. The other 7 star child powers traveled with the souls that stabilized them, however Kamek’s star power DIDN’T HAVE A SOUL TO TRAVEL WITH CAUSE… KAMEK IS ALIVE? So that raw star power was like “Ummm… Uhhhh…… Where do I go? I need a soul to latch onto, I am an insane amount of power…” Luckily Hip and Hop are twins, so naturally, it latched onto Hip’s soul and shares a soul between the two of them while also trying to make its own soul, but it can’t do it right. Super fine and no issues happen because of that at all. They aren’t offputting and weird, I promise.

So Hop was essentially SUPPOSED to have Kamek’s soul pre-packaged with the power, but Kamek is still very much alive, so it’s sort of. Trying to make due. It’s both halfway between Kamek and Hop while ALSO soulless but ALSO trying to use Hip’s soul to ground itself while ALSO trying to artificially make a soul for itself. It’s a mess. Just understand Hop’s star child powers are a mess because Kamek is still alive.

Of course, like in 2.0, the alpha koopz’s Game Over happens, and the prophecy is broken again. Kamek assumes “Well. That’s the end of that. I don’t have enough magic power to try and restart it again, because half of it was in that freak child, so I definitely can’t do a second round of that.”

Everyone in the Koopa Kingdom, including Bowz, are like “Don’t worry, there’ll be another way we can fulfill this prophecy! They came back the first time! People were wrong that it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance!”

Kamek plays along with it, being like “Yep, that definitely happens naturally. Obviously we’re going to have another set of star children. There were no outside forces that made it happen a second time.” You know. Like a liar.

However, SURPRISE! ROY AND IGGY SHOW UP! AND ROY’S ACTING LIKE ONE OF HIS SIBS! OH GOD, I DON’T THINK THIS HOW ANY OF THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. I LITERALLY DO NOT THINK THIS IS A PROPHECY THING ANYMORE. DID I ACCIDENTALLY TRAP MY SIBLING’S SOULS IN A NEVERENDING EXISTENCE LOOP CURSED TO LIVE VICARIOUSLY THROUGH OTHERS FOR ETERNITY? ALSO WHO THE HELL IS IN THAT ONE? (LOOKS AT IGGY)

(This is actually what this sketch on turtle-pen was about, with Kamek’s concern over them not being messed up, like how Hip and Hop were, haha)

So uh. Yeah, Kamek isn’t sure WHY the cycle is continuing, and he’s almost positive the prophecy’s not even really a thing anymore, but the star children stuff sure is! And the powers/souls are already super unstable by the time they get to blog koopz, and it only gets worse as time passes! (One of the earliest examples of that magical decay was Roy suddenly getting an impulse to shave his head to match Bully/pre-koopz “Roy”. Eventually this kind of thing would start happening later on down the line in higher frequency with the other koopz as well. This is actually what the third sketch on this post was alluding to. In fact, Iggy’s is actually the most unstable magic of them all, because ever since the fake-out death with Kamek, whoever got HIS star child powers was always going to be the weakest/most unstable magically. More about this will be covered in Roy’s section below)

The Koopz

What order did they all end up at Bowz’s?

I talked about how each of them got to the castle in their bios, however if you can’t piece it together, the  order is Roy/Iggy -> Ludwig -> Morton -> Wendy -> Larry -> Lemmy. Junior, I think, showed up between Wendy and Larry. Bowser just walked in with him one day. None of them know where he came from.

Why is Iggy a vegetarian? Also why are his eyes like that?

I’m gonna keep it buck: Iggy is a vegetarian purely because I wanted an excuse to make him monster-y sometimes. In 2.0 Koopz, I justified it by the star child power (being inherently a magikoopa power) not meshing well to him being a Toad, playing off the idea of Toads and Koopas being diametrically opposed.

There was a sliding scale of “how lizard” someone was based on how well their species reacted with magikoopa magic (I only remember Iggy being the most “lizard-y” and Larry being the 2nd most “lizard-y”, This is also why his eyes are like that and why he and Larry have split tongues) Eating meat weirdly triggered some primal urge in him due to the magikoopa thing, I guess?

In 3.0 Koopz, I genuinely have no reason why he can’t eat meat or has weird eyes since I got rid of the lizard-y scale, I was gonna figure it out later, haha. The 2nd pic is actually him after accidentally eating Pom’s burger when his veggie burger got swapped at a restaurant.

Who was that kid in the flashforward meme?

That’s Ozzy, Iggy and Pom’s kid! He melts! :) (cw for body horror and blood in that link) But it’s okay, he gets better!

To put it plainly, in 2.0, Pom accidentally gets some of her DNA in Iggy’s clone nonsense, and oops they have a kid now. He is NOT genetically stable. Drama ensues, and they have to figure out how to get him to not completely unravel.

At first, we thought that maybe Iggy should have him melt and clone him again without the memories of melting and present it as something he worked tirelessly on (and BoomPom mun drew an excellent comic about Pom’s reaction to it), but we couldn’t justify any way for her to forgive Iggy for basically replacing Ozzy, and Poggy was just too important to us to break up. We were stumped.

And long story short, the book Ludwig was reading when he was in se7en-sib’s world was one about DNA cloning. (But that’s spoiler stuff for se7en sib’s blog that I won’t get into, heh heh) And Ludwig, despite it being the perfect opportunity to have Iggy traumatize and disappoint Pom, tells them about it and that they should visit se7en-sib’s Kamek somehow to fix it. (He does fix it! By melting Ozzy and recreating him again. HOWEVER Ludwig and Iggy have to swear to secrecy about it. They take that shit to their graves.)

So he’s better now!

ROY:

Roy had started on the path of his biggest plot points being covered (him finally ending up with Boom and slowly showcasing his natural inclination to being a leader, despite NOT wanting to be), but I didn’t get his biggest two out of the way (one of which I’m glad I didn’t get to yet): Roy cheating and Roy almost dying.

Koopz 1.0 - Roy was going to be transphobic (specifically enbyphobic. This is actually one of the reasons he doesn’t like Larry all that much), but over time he’d learn that that’s a personal problem. He specifically had a lot to unlearn of his biases of what inherently makes someone a man/woman. Ludwig’s transition was fine with him, but Larry “switching” didn’t make sense to him. (His definition of a “man” was severely warped by his abusive father) This is actually still canon, but he learns better, of course.

Roy was also going to cheat on Boom via a night of drunken infidelity. The big twist was going to be that it was with a woman, and along with him, we find out that he’s bisexual. After some thinking it over, I ultimately decided, despite the drama that would ensue, I didn’t feel particularly comfortable perpetuating what I didn’t realize was a “cheating bisexual” stereotype. Morton’s bi as well, so maybe it would have been fine? But I was like “Uhhhh noooo I shouldn’t do that.” (I wish I could find the pic BoomPom mun drew in reference to when they got locked in a room together by Pom and Iggy to “talk it out”. Boom was punching the wall next to Roy and it was real dramatic. Oh well!) There was also a discussion about a compromise of him sleeping with other people, but letting Boom know about it beforehand? It was gonna be MESSY, haha!

Koopz 2.0/3.0 - Him coming out as bisexual changed to what was going to be a comic with Roy confronting the fact his hypermasculinity was exacerbated because he felt that not being solely attracted to men was a win for his shitty dad. (It makes sense in HIS head: being gay but also being hyper-masculine and liking pink was to piss off his dad. But if he’s actually also attracted to women, then his dad gets what he wants, right? For him to like women?) It was going to end in a sweet moment where Boom reassured him being bi didn’t mean his dad was right about him.

Now to Roy almost dying. Hoo boy. So as mentioned, the star child powers they all got were already quite unstable. As time went on, things started unraveling at a quicker pace. Roy started having weird flashbacks/visions in his dreams (only telling Iggy), which are of course visions of the alpha koopz. Soon enough all the present-day koopz would start to have moments where they physically re-enact something the previous star children did. This was especially prevalent when certain koopz interacted with one another (like if Lemmy and Iggy brushed by each other, suddenly they’re acting exactly like Hip and Hop again for a short while). These moments not only got more frequent, but longer as well.

And we’d build up to Roy, like Bully, on the roof, the rest of the koopz in their hazy, lucid states, encouraging him, like the alpha koopz did so long ago. None of them would be really in their right minds, it was all going to be very dramatic. There was gonna be rain and everything, building up to the inevitable of the cycle being broken again.

What’s the difference this time around? Roy’s dating Boom. And Boom solves this the only way he knows how: by clocking Roy in the face before he almost slips and falls. So Roy gets knocked out, which manages to knock ALL the other koopz out of their weird stupor.

This plotline gets resolved by the koopz having a heart-to-heart with each other, with Bowz, and with Kamek, who comes clean about the whole prophecy thing, which isn’t quite real anymore (due to the 3.0 change). Professing how he just missed his family and didn’t want any of this to happen nor did he know any of this was going to happen.

Ultimately they’d come to the conclusion that they need to let these weird soul/magic things go, to stop anchoring their souls and not allowing them to move on, and to let the koopz live how they were supposed to. Kamek can’t guarantee they’ll be able to even harness magic anymore, or honestly if this would even work, but they end up performing a VERY extensive, painful, and tiring ritual that allows Kamek closure, allows the blog koopz to meet the alpha koopz for a moment, and allows them to live their normal lives. (As koopa royalty, but you know.)

There was also a planned Nintendask event where Roy was going to raise his father from the dead to confront him about his shitty behavior. Chaos was going to ensue and there was going to be a small “Zombie apocalypse” event similar to the revolution arc that occurred.

IGGY:

The main things with Iggy had already pretty much occurred: Hooking up with Pom -> Love poisoning himself -> Confrontation with Ludwig about it -> ??? -> Profit. Honestly there truly only one plot point that didn’t get to be touched on, and that’s Marilyn! (Those who follow turtle-pen probably know Marilyn)

Koopz 1.0: Like I said, at first the star child powers were going to be specifically magikoopa and make Iggy super weirdly unstable magically. He at first would dye his hair blue/yellow/pink (Hop’s colors. This is pre-alpha koopz) to not stick out in Toad society. His parents were a LITTLE worried about his nonconformity. He was going to run away from home, because oops he ate meat and hurt his parents pretty bad. I THINK at one point this switched to him accidentally killing them, but we don’t talk about the Edgy Koopz Era. This was switched back to harming them pretty soon after.

Koopz 2.0: After the introduction of the Hop thing, it now became less “He dyed his hair to fit in” and “He dyed his hair because he Mysteriously Doesn’t Know Why.”

Truly the biggest change/introduction was the inception of Marilyn. HE IS… Once again a thinly-veiled excuse to shove some favorite tropes onto Iggy. BoomPom mun and I got super into the Jekyll and Hyde musical (specifically with Anthony Warlow), and we went “Iggy should get a Hyde thing going on”. So in combination with the weird “can’t eat meat lest you go sicko mode” thing, we decided to justify it by making it be Iggy try to get rid of his “lizardness”. (This was when the lizard scale still existed) It manifested as Marilyn, who REALLY hated Iggy and REALLY liked Pom. Shenanigans ensued.

Koopz 3.0: Once the lizard scale was taken out, we were like “Uhhhh Marilyn shouldn’t exist anymore”, however unfortunately I love him. So YOU REMEMBER THAT LOVE POTION ANTIDOTE THAT POM GAVE IGGY THAT MADE HIM SICK? Yeah Marilyn came from that now. That weird star child magic latched onto this manifestation of emotions that became his own being (you can see it in the last two pics here). Sue me, man.

You can read more about him on turtle-pen, but the end-game was that Marilyn was sent to Sol’s lab to work for him so he could be humbled and he fell for Bob. A huge nerd. He also became besties with Scotty. The end.

Outside of this, I really had no other big sweeping plot points for Iggy to cover, other than him and Boom learning to get along, potentially meeting Boom and Pom’s actually alive parents (This was only briefly discussed with BoomPom mun, and we didn’t plan much further than that other than AU discussions), and the introduction of Ozzy.

Oh and Iggy was also going to come to terms with IDing as agender during 1.0, but I ultimately never got around to confirming it.

MORTON:

I believe really the only big plot situation that was going to happen for Morton was developing further about his crush on Birdetta only for him to get turned down. I was juggling seven kids, man.

Other than this, I don’t think I ever fully explained how he lost his leg? It was implied in his flashback, but his father (a hardass) was the type to be like “Speak when spoken to” to a degree that was unhealthy. At the military base he was raised on, he managed to get a pretty bad cut on his leg, but, in fear of his father, he never spoke up about it. It developed sepsis and well you know how that goes.

LARRY:

Koopz 1.0: The biggest change was Larry getting hit with the Edgy Koopz Beam as well, similarly to Iggy. He was normal, then shifted to being more violent, back to being normal again.

Koopz 2.0: Even in 1.0, Larry was always planned to have been dealing with depression and anxiety via… self-medicating. However 2.0 is really what changed the cause from intrinsic to extrinsic. The main thing that exacerbated his smoking habit, depression, and anxiety was that he found out they weren’t the only set of kids Bowz had dealt with. I don’t know how, but he somehow managed to find out about the alpha koopz. He kept that secret to himself, but it not only made him feel replaceable/used, but it soured his opinion on Bowz as a whole.

Ultimately Larry was going to get therapy, discuss with the other koopz what he knew about the previous star children, and eventually ween away from his drug habit. I can’t find the post, but I did mention it when doing some ask meme about rating ships and someone sent in a Larry/Weed one and I went “0/5”, haha.

LUDWIG:

There’s honestly not much to say here. Truly most of Ludwig’s arcs have been concluded: his crush on Pom has been wrapped up, him coming out to the koopz as trans (officially) has happened, and he’s on track with his HRT.

The only current plan that had been in motion was to more properly have him and Iggy talk it out and Pom be a wingman for him in his further romantic endeavors.

I suppose that there were also potential plans for him and Scotty to end up together because. Um. They’re cute. (There was also a mild discussion of him and Trudy as well, but there was a lot more discussion between BoomPom mun and I about him and Scotty!)

WENDY:

Similarly to Morton, Wendy didn’t have much going on on her end in regards to big arching plot points either, other than ending up with Chuck eventually and also confronting her insecurities with feeling like she’s not very special!

LEMMY:

And like Morton and Wendy before him, uh. Lemmy didn’t have much! The only planned thing was the drama of his type 1 diabetes diagnosis and that’s IT. Maybe bring back his mom since that was touched on?

Endgame for the Koopz:

They were going to give up their star child powers and return to normalcy, as mentioned in Roy’s section. However they’re still royals so of course it’s still a weird and exciting life for them. I believe they all still end up with the ability to use magic, but it’s much more elbow grease then they’re used to working with.

Roy was going to have a kid with Boom! Unsure if biologically/magically or adopted. Somehow they get their little girl, Stevie, though! I think Roy would also get in touch with his estranged sister that I only just realized I haven’t brought up (4th pic here!).

Roy and Larry were going to end up as co-DJs together working at a nightclub.

Iggy and Pom were gonna have Ozzy, and honestly? Kinda just continue to get into crazy shenanigans. Iggy wanted to rule the Koopa Kingdom but somehow he manages to get convinced not to. (He would NOT be good at it) Iggy would also get in touch with his parents again. They really did miss him after all of these years.

Ludwig and Wendy are going to be the ACTUAL co-rulers of the Koopa Kingdom. They were both so hard-headed and stubborn about it, fighting tooth and nail to make it to the top, Bowz just crowned them both. I think Ludwig also would get in touch with his bio-family as well.

I don’t remember in full what was going to happen with Morton and Lemmy as their end game? Lemmy might have become a circus performer and Morton the military general of the Koopa Army? I really don’t recall to be honest!

And that’s it! That’s all the plot I remember! If you made it this far, thank you for reading!

[firadessa]

I've been thinking if "she's a water fairy you can tell because her skin is blue" was a reference/inside joke to this character... could it be a early Silvermist?

Same posing

Tinker Bell - Concept Art by Mark Cote

- ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʀᴇᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴄʀᴇᴅɪᴛ -

[jealousjealousgurlll]

His fashionista

⠀:¨ ·.· ¨:⠀ ⠀ `· . ୨୧⠀

Hi everyone! This is my first story on Tumblr, I've been wanting to write for awhile especially about Luigi. If there is any flaws or feedback please please please let me know, comments are on!

I have a few extended concepts for certain bullet points, if there one that sticks out the most let me know and I can create an extension on it.

Mood board for this story

Thank you for reading and take care xoxoxoxo ᰔ ᡣ𐭩 ᡣ𐭩

Pairing: Luigi Mangione x reader

Word count (story only):2,018

Warnings: None just fluff ;)

Imagine you, an inspiring fashion designer falls for the dorky data scientist named Luigi Mangione.

Based on living in Maryland

-First encounter:

Your favorite fabric store is next door to his favorite cafe. Staring at you and your well detailed outfits throughout the window Luigi would be distracted from his work observing you.

The first time you saw him was picking up an order from that same coffee shop. On your way out, you made eye contact with him. Nothing really stood out about him honestly.

Second encounter/first conversation

You were in line to place your order, in the meanwhile you were adding final details to your latest sketch and a tap on your shoulder came to your surprise. He looked familiar, you thought. He asked you about your sketches, talking your head off you both held up the line. After ordering, you and him sat and discussed your interests and careers.

He observed every detail about you, something about his presence swept you in, his intellectual yet humorous personality made you grow curious about him. Before leaving for your meeting, he asks for your phone number and social media handles. 

-Stalking or “obsessively analyzing”

You glanced at Luigi’s instagram, wholesome guy with minimum fashion however he looks great in a suit and with a clean cut.

You became Luigi’s newest fascination, having a fair amount of digital footprint, Luigi observed your instagram first. Trailing back to your high school days posing with friends in art class, your instagram stories had poems you wrote. He even discovered your fashion blog and youtube channel. Reading every post you made and spending hours watching your videos. He took a few notes on your favorite restaurants, your birthday, anything that was sentimental. 

-Texting and facetime

Whenever you guys text, he responds back immediately. He would send you random articles and ask your opinion. One night when texting back and forth, he asked if he can FaceTime you. You agreed which led to a 5 hour conversation. He was wearing glasses and you asked if they were real, to which he said “it’s for fashion”. His witty humor and cheerful spirit made it easy to talk to him

-Hanging out

Luigi initiated most of the hang outs. Secretly he planned everything (how a boyfriend does), from taking a pottery class together, trying new restaurants and going to yoga classes. Hanging out at each other’s apartments eventually came around to which he would clean his apartment, nervous of your opinion. In reality his apartment is organized and fits him perfectly. The compliments and the stares you gave looking around made him feel secure. Luigi loved your apartment, the vibrant colors, the messy table filled with scattered papers, fabric around a plugged in sewing machine. Your apartment is a perfect representation of you!

-Feelings? 

The more time you spent with Luigi, the more you developed feelings for him. When taking a stroll with him, you notice yourself staring at his side profile “I like big noses” . The tik tok audio from Doja Cat appeared in your mind, the curls that formed his hair you found cute. When it was summer, his sunkissed tan complimented him so well . Scanning your eyes up and down, there was definitely physical attraction, the physical attraction and the connection you guys built in the past months made you crush on him in secret. The fear of him not reciprocating the same feelings terrified you. Whenever a few days passed by and you hadn’t seen or spoke to him, you started to miss him and would reach out. Luigi on the other hand, he describes it as “love at first sight” , extremely dramatic and a sprinkle of delusion, he adored your style, the confidences you had when walking into a room. With the connection that was created by you guys, his attraction to you skyrocketed. He also mentioned his feelings he had to you to his sisters, encouraging him to ask you out. His sisters found it precious that he cares so deeply for you.

-Flea market memories

One of your hang out adventures landed you guys in a flea market. One of the vendors that caught your eye had a vintage sweater. In your mind, this sweater would be a great fit for Luigi. You showed  him the sweater and insisted he tried it on. Luigi gave in and tried on, the sweater was a perfect match . The vendor, an older gentleman, said to him “listen to your lady, she knows her fashion” assuming the two of you were in a relationship. Standing behind him, you hugged him from the back Luigi subconsciously smiled at this reaction. He agreed to get the sweater which you couldn’t be happier.

-Train trip

You and Luigi went on a train trip to North Carolina. A nine hour train ride may sound gruesome but having Luigi by your side made this an unforgettable trip. Listening to music together from sharing wired earbuds, stealing each other's snacks. You started to doze off after a few hours in, drifting your head onto Luigi’s shoulder. It wasn’t intentional at all. Luigi didn’t mind, he actually liked it. He smelled the shampoo in your hair, getting a special view of your facial features  “so pretty” he mumbled. When you woke up, you made direct eye contact with Luigi, he giggled at your facial expression while you immediately moved your head out of embarrassment. “I am so sorry” you frantically apologized, “It’s all good” his voice was deep and slowly turned you on. This trip definitely brought you guys closer physically and emotionally, staying in the same room you saw Lu in a different light. He is a clean person. He always puts the toilet seat down after using it. During the visit, you both went hiking together, it was your first time ever and Luigi was basically a pro. He helped you whenever you were close to stumbling, assuring you that you will be just fine. “See I told you it’s not difficult, it’s relaxing right?” Hiking was something you had no interest in but with a little encouragement from your bestie westie, hiking is your newfound  favorite physical activity.

-Hair troubles

One night, you heard a ding on your phone. A text from your contact named“Loo-ee jee” appeared.

“Hey, are you busy?”

Responding back “No what’s up?”

Luigi facetimes you, in distress, discussing his hair problems. He explains that he cannot remember the shampoo he used as a child living at home, he had some event to attend in the afternoon so he wanted to wash his hair and try something different with his curls. He begs for your help and you agree to help him. Meeting him at a “beauty supply store” foreign in his world. You both grabbed some hair care products and went back to your apartment. You guided him through the process of taking care of his curls and even wrote down the step by step manual to follow on his “wash days”. He ended up spending the night because he was a little tippy from the wine he brought over(don’t drink and drive kids). Both of you indulged in a few glasses, he mentioned the wine was from a family member in Italy (hmm exotic you said to yourself). Both of you crashed on your couch, he laid in your lap wrapped in a large fuzzy blanket. You woke in the middle of the night to see Lulu in your lap, you liked it. He looked well rested and comfortable. This entire night wasn’t supposed to happen actually. Luigi faked his cries for help solely because he missed you and wanted to do something more intimate with you. You never realized if he was legit hearing about his mishaps you just wanted to help your friend.

-Styling Lulu

At Luigi’s apartment, you joked about his style playfully. “I bet in your closet you have no more than 5 things including your blue bali shirt, adidas hoodie, a random slightly used button down shirt and your Upenn shirt”. He rolled his eyes and tried to laugh because it was true. His fashion can be described as low minimum, he didn’t really care about having a surplus of clothing or being the most fashionable in the room. Fashion was foreign to him, while it was your way of life. He asks you to help with his style and you were treating this as a project. Spending some time in the downtown area to shop, you and Luigi went shopping. Stopping in the first store, you immediately see something with potential. Grabbing short sleeve crew necks in different colors, picking up the shirt to hold up to Luigi you were thinking this is a good start. Solid basic shirts yet it is upgraded to his current style. Intentionally you picked up the shirts a size down because you wanted to see Luigi’s muscles pop out. Picking out the casual black and white, you also grabbed a plum(deep purple) shirt and an olive green. Luigi liked the colors you picked for him and made a purchase. The next store you found many gems for him, a few pairs of vintage Levi’s jeans fitting him perfectly, an upgraded adidas hoodie, grey nike sweatpants, some linen shorts and even a Upenn varsity jacket. Dropping you off to your place, before walking out of his car Luigi thanks you for your help and leans in for a hug. The hug was warm and made you feel fuzzy inside, pulling away your cheeks turned red. He stayed parked until you made it to the elevator, turning around one last time to wave to him and even blew a kiss. He caught your kiss and motioned, putting it close to his heart.

-Making it official 

After befriending Luigi Mangione for an entire year. You expressed your feelings to him, it was difficult because of the fear of rejection. His reaction was something out of a fairytale, he reciprocated the same feelings you had for him. About a week after this conversation he planned a dinner for the both of you. It was at a contemporary sushi place, the architecture and interior design  in the building was seductive, lowly dinned lights and chirper music played. Luigi arrived with a bouquet of purple and white flowers. Your eyes beamed with joy to see them, he made a note from watching one of your youtube videos that purple and white are your favorite colors for flowers. He was wearing the same sweatshirt he got at the flea market, his hair was freshly washed and cut and added a detailed watch to his outfit. Smiling from ear to ear when you saw him wrapping your arms around him felt peaceful, a similar feeling to home. You guys talked and talked, a few cheesy but cute pick up lines were said to you. Luigi’s words were blissful, constantly wanting to make you laugh. Finishing up your entree, the waiter came to your table and said “Dessert?” replying back “No thank you”, Luigi replied “Yes, your best dessert”. A few minutes pass and the waiter places down a white plate in front of you. There was chocolate writing on the plate, reading off it says “Will you be my girlfriend?” with macaroons and chocolate covered strawberries. Coming to you as a sweet surprise you look up at Luigi with a nervous smile he says “So what do you say?” . Licking your lips before responding you say “Yes I would love to”. He smiles and balls his fist to say a silent “Yes” out of pride. He came over to your side of the booth to embrace you with your first kiss with him. His lips were smooth and gilded gently with yours, a little tongue was added by you and he loved it. When walking out of the restaurant to your car, you were on cloud nine. Luigi besides you holding your hand he opens your car door and says “Goodnight girlfriend” you smile at his words and say “Bye bye boyfriend”.

[themisscuy]

(AAA I want to punch smth cuz there were a mistake and I had to make the whole post again- oh well)

OKayy, I don't know what name I could give to this AU yet, or if someone already made smth similar, but I liked the concept (and the story that I'm making in my head) and I wanted to share some of it here!

This is a kind of concept art KASBDK The main idea is that, in this AU, which is contextualized before The Showdown, Dark is captured by Victim (through the mercenaries) and is used to be a kind of weapon to take revenge on Chosen and Alan. The extended version is below!

I imagine it like, Dark and Chosen had a big discussion, so Dark decided to go away to have some time alone. The problem is that neither of them know that Victim already found out where they were established and were spying on them. Victim knows that Dark is the only stick which Chosen has a relationship with, and a very close one, so they decide to take him away from him. So, as soon as they noticed that they got separated, they decided to put all the effort into the capture of Dark. They got it.

First, they decide to check Dark's memories to get information about Chosen, and well, they end up discovering everything about Dark. One thing that got their interest is that Dark was making his first sketches of Virabot's first model, and that one of his first targets to use it was Alan's PC. So, Victim decides to use Dark's ideas to take revenge on both Chosen and Alan, and after achieving that, they would get rid of Dark (since he's an accomplice of Mitsi's death, so they really, really hate him too). Since they know that Dark is very loyal to Chosen, they decide to design a device to control him. This device, divided in two (for the head and the neck), is made to alter Dark's memories and temper, so in that way they can turn him against Chosen. This device is also designed to kill him rapidly in any case, and Victim has the control of that. I want to point out that Victim tried to manipulate Dark's code first, but he had developed a big will against it (since he didn't want to hurt Chosen), so they went for the device.

I have more ideas, but I prefer to keep working and defining them before sharing! Here's a lil sketchy comic to illustrate some of what I said before.

And here's some sketches of when I was brainstorming >:)

Hope you like it!

[shmaba]

I’m going to assume that at this point you’ve all seen Critical Role’s new show Candela Obscura and at least skimmed through the Quickstart Guide (you have done all that riiiight??) So I wanted to compile all the things I’ve done that have been shown so far. Its long so read below the line!

I’m going to try to avoid spoilers. So feel free to read without worry. I’m also going to try and avoid breaking any NDA like a good professional. So I will not be doing some deep dive behind the scenes thing. Only visuals that have already been publicly shared are going to be on here

The very first thing I did on this show was the concepts for the main set. Everything is practical. Nothing is green screen or cg or whatever. Some people think it’s just good cg but nope that's all real. You could touch it! (don’t touch it, there are ghosts)

There were multiple iterations on the design, each with their own vibe and statement piece. CR narrowed it down to what you see in the show: a sort of storage hall with an odd clock contraption behind the GM. I think I called this design version the “Abyssal Hall” or something like that (I gave the different versions names to better keep track of which design was being discussed)

The company Flip This Bitch built the physical set. They turned my silly little art into a real thing. So they did all the actual magic of making this set come together in the end! They deserve a lot of the credit for it looking so good in the end.

Also that little piece of art in the bottom left of the preshow is a section from the final concept art of the set.

That contraption behind Matt is based on astrolabes and clocks. This isn’t really meant to be a literal astrolabe or a clock as we would use them in our world. Narratively this isn’t a device that measures either of the things that a traditional astrolabe or clock does. This is a special magickal tool that does a secret third thing.

Also I did concepts for the GM screen. You don't really see it besides in the fancy-shmancy preshow. There were a number of more intricate designs for it but CR went with the simpler option since the only part that would be visible on stream is the top, so that's where I put the most detail.

I should also note that I did not design the logo! It’s pretty prominent on the GM screen but I was supplied an already existing logo for this.

NEXT is the Taliesin enclosure set that you see in the trailer. This is actually meant to be like the lantern room on the top of a lighthouse, minus the big light beacon (You could say Taliesin is the beacon).

Also in the trailer you see a couple brief sketches I did for some world building concepts:

Speaking of sketches there are a number of art pieces of mine in the Quickstart guide

A lot of my art is sketches. They’re all meant to be like notes and drawings from members of Candela as they travel and notate their findings. Most of the notes on these sketches are my actually my notes when I was doing world building concepts, but they replaced my handwriting with a font because my handwriting sucks lmao (also likely for ease of future localization).

Also the cover of the Quickstart guide uses line art of a part of that astrolabe clock set piece. This line art was part of the deliverables that was sent over to Flip This Bitch for construction. They’re just using pieces of those set concepts everywhere!

As you can see I’ve done a lot of art for this project. I was part of this project when it was still early in development. It’s changed quite a bit from where we started. 

I wasn’t the only one that made all this art happen though. Other artists, writers, and designers got to add their own vision to this. It was very much a collaborative effort that took a long time to happen. It’s very exciting to see everyone’s hard work come to fruition and there is a lot more to come!

[firadessa]

Me walking up to the witches grotto make a soul bargain in desperation for the movie that almost killed the Disney Fairies franchise but the witch sold their soul to the Disney company

Me and the crew if we ever get our hands on some new material

Me trying to guess plotpoints based on random concept art/prototype thing

Me if some one had it on their hard drive under ransom

Disneys security is slaking rn please

[usagifuyusummer]

More silly and fun practice sketches on the Victorian Era FOP AU lol. Just gonna post them here first while we're still developing this and busy with our real-life duties as students.

There's actually a ton of my thoughts in the alt text of these images lol. I hope it's still there. I will also include the links of the existing posts relating to this AU to keep track of what has been created.

Origin Discussion Posts

Updated Character Designs 1

Updated Character Designs and Concepts 2

Concept Art 1: Boy with a Parasol

Tumblr Asks 1

Credit: @keyintheeye-blog original creator and the default character designer of this Victorian Era FOP AU.

I will post my other thoughts (something like a what's happening update) on the repost of this later. Gotta get back to my unavoidable university duties... Have a nice day tho 💐

[xadianglyphs]

Seventh Source: The Dark Magic Symbol

In honor of Book Seven: Dark, I want to revisit and expand on analysis of the dark magic symbol, itself—something I'm always low-key thinking about, but now I'm going to make you think about it, too.

We are lucky enough to have a fascinating window into the design process for all the primal source symbols (both individually and as a set) through the portfolio of Samuel Thompson, the designer. This includes the dark magic symbol:

I've scaled up the secondary, "also-ran" designs so they're all the same size, because I do want to talk about some of them. There are several paths of development visible, and each one reveals something that was seriously considered as a possibility for representing dark magic as a whole.

It's in the Blood

So to start out, we know on some level that, during story development, what became dark magic was originally blood magic. Two years ago, when I first looked at the concept art for the symbols, the filename used for the dark magic symbol image was "blood." That was corrected at some point when the designer uploaded new images with better presentation (as one does when maintaining a portfolio), but it happened.

There's also more than enough association between dark magic and blood developed over the course of the series that it seems pretty clear that the name changed on a surface level but the underlying concept remained.

It's even visible in the designs that not only was a blood droplet considered as the entire symbol, but it was incorporated into variations of multiple design directions.

Dragons in the Dark

There's a bit of a problem when you go from "blood" to "dark," which is "how do you represent darkness in icon form?" The primal sources are ultimately elemental—you can see in their design process that a lot of it was about creating a balanced set where the symbols are both individually distinct and yet related enough to fit together as a group. Earth has the usual "do we do rocks or plants?" decision-making, but otherwise it's just... the sun is the sun, water is water, etc. But what the hell is the iconic form of darkness?

Well, apparently it's dragons, because pretty much all of the rest of the designs are a clear evolution of what began as a dragon symbol. It gets stylized into a set of wings that is then further stylized, and in combination with other influences discussed in the next section, we eventually start getting something like the final symbol.

There's one other direction kind of explored here, which is the ouroboros dragon(s). I actually wrote out a whole thing about the ouroboros as a symbol historically vs. through the lens of modern Christian-influenced western culture to use here, but really none of that is the point. The most likely scenario is that they told the designer, "let's explore some possible directions dragons" and the ouroboros designs are just something you do in that situation. Obviously you don't want to actually choose it for the final direction, because then you'll never escape the specter of Fullmetal Alchemist.

But like... why dragons? I mean, this is not an accident. The designer dragon-ed the fuck out of this shit, and the only reason to do that is "that's what he was specifically told to do." So at some point during development, there was apparently a consensus that dark magic should be represented by something related to dragons.

Now, this could be as simple as "dark magic uses the essence of magical creatures, and a dragon is pretty much the epitome of a magical creature," or something like "dark magic elevates humans to being equal with dragons." After s6, however, I feel like there are enough weird little things connecting the Celestial Order, the archdragons, Aaravos, Laurelion, the Staff of Ziard, and various other stuff that it could be... something else. Something we're not yet able to see in its entirety.

But that's something we'll have to wait to find out.

The Staff of Hermes Ziard Hermes

Now to return to reality: the influence of the caduceus on the dark magic symbol is a done deal. It has literally been said. Even if it hadn't, it's also just... kind of obvious.

Like yeah, that sure is a set of wings with a little knob between them and a twisty stem, just like the the final dark magic symbol and all the designs that most resemble it.

I'm not going to go over the caduceus in depth because I did that once already. You can tell I was naught but a wee, innocent babe by the way I use the words "wiki" and "confirmed" in the same sentence. In that post, I spent a lot of time digging into the associations of the caduceus and Hermes/Mercury as if that was a window that would tell us something about dark magic. It was a fun post but largely irrelevant, now—this time, we're going to come at it from another direction.

Setting aside the more distinguishing features of the caduceus like the wings and snakes, what is it? It's a staff. (Or a rod, depending on your interpretation of the distinction between the two.)

Well, interestingly enough, we happen to have another staff to bring to the table for consideration. One that's important within the setting, inextricably linked with dark magic, and with an iconic design.

Now bear with me, because here's my argument: the dark magic symbol is based on the caduceus, but in relationship with the Staff of Ziard, with either the staff influencing the design of the symbol or vice versa.

To see what I'm talking about, we can take a look at the staff from a few different angles. Personally, when seen closed and from the front, I think it already looks plenty like wings.

But if we put it in profile I can do a little overlay to show what I'm talking about more easily:

It's not strictly the most anatomically accurate setup, but stylized in a way that's interestingly similar to the stylization of the "wings" in several of the symbol designs. This could be related to the the "dragons" stage of the designs, assuming that there is some connection with the dragons, or it could just be visual influence from the caduceus itself.

We should also consider the shape of the staff from the front when it's extended (unfolded?):

The rounded rhomboid/oval shape, the diamond in the center? Come on, work with me—it could conceivably resemble the symbol, right? Though yes, I do know what you're thinking. A professional would call that "yonic" and definitely not giggle about it.

As for the twisty bit—what would be the coiling snakes in the caduceus—there's a certain iconic spell associated with the Staff of Ziard:

Maybe a stretch. But you don't get much twistier than a tornado.

Contexts and Meaning within the Setting

Now that I've chewed on my tinfoil had enough that I'll never get the taste out of my mouth, I also want to just touch brief(-ish)ly on the actual use of the symbol within the context of the series setting. Like the primal source symbols, the dark magic symbol doesn't actually show up very often. The two biggies are Claudia's spellbook and the Key of Aaravos in Callum's dream:

I'm going to ignore Callum's dream because the use of the dark magic symbol there says more about Callum's psychology than it says about actual dark magic, while Claudia's spellbook is a use that its author presumably intended to be meaningful for other dark mages.

Ignoring the garbage symbols in the corners, the central hexagonal symbol is reminiscent of the geometric tree of life diagram, which you may be familiar with if you are into either one of several varieties of religious mysticism... or anime. Let's be real, it's probably anime.

I'm not going to explain it in detail because honestly I don't know a lot about it and it's (intentionally, as with most mysticism) pretty complicated. Extremely summarized baby version which suffices for my purpose here is: the hexagonal tree of life diagram is a hierarchical arrangement of nodes and connections between them, with each node representing a distinct facet through which we are meant to recognize a single greater truth or divinity. On the cover of the spellbook, we have the dark magic symbol surrounded by smaller symbols for each primal source. This is a clearer arrangement that could be conveying the same concept—each of the primal sources is only a facet of a truer, deeper magic, which we are to take as being dark magic.

None of that is particularly important, I just think it's neat. Anyway, what I want to do now is propose that there is, as of season six, one additional appearance of the dark magic symbol within the setting context. This one:

Like... rhomboid shape, little diamond in the center, twisty stem? This isn't something unique to the Hearts of Cinder spell, it's an early or ritualistically stylized version of the dark magic symbol.

To contextualize this further, allow me to draw attention to this image from Tales of Xadia, part of a larger graphic showing a scroll that illustrates significant events in the history of dark magic:

We have a sacrificed creature, from which dark magic flows. On it appears to be carved some symbol composed of straight lines, which because of the size and angle we can't really see clearly. I spitballed a while back that it could be a straight-lines version of the Star primal symbol. We also have use of the actual dark magic symbol, which I'll spare you my analysis of since really it's just more of the same.

It's still a little bit fuzzy how dark magic spells get the magic resources from reagents, but generally a living reagent (used in its entirety) is killed and non-living reagents (harvested from a larger source) have some destructive act performed on them, like crushing. We have a spell that uses a living(?) human heart, which is apparently distinct from a human life in some way, even though the latter is not going to be getting very far without the former. For casting such a spell, unless you're currently holding someone else's still-beating heart in your hand, you probably want to be at least a little specific about exactly which heart in the vicinity is gonna get consumed. I'm putting forward that there's a way to mark a reagent such that it connects properly with the spell in cases where squishing it in your fist or whatever is impractical.

Like with a symbol, right? And what better symbol than the one for all of dark magic, the staff that may or may not be behind everything?

With that, thanks for coming to this long-ass TED Talk that was entirely an excuse to say "the symbol Viren carves over his heart to mark it for sacrifice is an ancient or stylized version of the dark magic symbol, which itself likely on some level derives its shape from the Staff of Ziard, which he is literally holding in his hands." I've wanted to say it since s6 released. I cannot be stopped.