#im kinda proud of the white design i made for the sillies and then im an idiot for choosing an edit that barely shows the body

[pocket-gems]

Did you ever think of having your own AU or series based off a gem?

Oh absolutely!!

Here are some old panels, they followed stories I really wanted to follow but hyperfixations come and go, my ADHD is mean and now that my device to draw is busted, simply drawing anything in general is a pain to my eyes. Before doing anything, I have to at the very least update the designs.

To make a gem series I have 2 options, Draco's or Blizzard's.

Dragon's Breath Opal's story is about discovery, exploration and love, follows more closely the canon story and blablabla here's the summary:

1-Shining Light

(Chevron gets lost on Earth's landscape and meets a lone Pearl)

2-The Escape

(Dragon's Breath Opal meets an Azurite, who forcefully removes Draco from Earth)

3-Divine Search

(Chevron, Pearl and Azurite decide they to recover an old friend)

4-Flash

(A Homeworld gem detects and follows our gang)

5- Transparent Crystal

(Draco and Azurite discover who really are the Crystal Gems)

6-Terrifying Agate

(Pearl's friend is found alongside someone thought shattered)

7-Roots

(Knowing who the Crystal Gems are, they decide to come back to Earth, thinking of it as a safe space)

It's all a WIP that I'd love to work on regardless of people liking it or not. I don't have much left on the To-do list for this to start ""production"" haha

Blizzard Stone is a VERY heavy-centred gem that I'm trying to update. The story is leaning towards sad with more mature tones. Story wise is pretty settled and ready to go BUT OH THE DESIGNS ARE NOT UPDATED OUGGHHHHHHH

About AUs, I don't care for them? I think I was very saturated of them back when people wouldn't stop doing AU edits with designs that just. Eh? The designs is what matter to me the most (as an absolute nerd of character design) and there's so much potential on putting on place Pink as White. Reverse the roles, push her toxic jester side, don't just make her look like White!

AUs just make me change designs because I don't get too deep into the lore or else I loose track. I can make silly edits at least. Very oddly specific, sorry :(

[infini-tree]

ok seeing as ive essentially bingewatched all of tpod have this informal review abt my first impressions overall:

pros:

while there are only so little movie characters in the series, the ones that do appear are still in-character and develops the secondary characters 

THIS SHOW MADE ME RLY SAD ABT GRANDMA PANDA FOR A HOT SECOND THERE SO PROPS

actually, kinda made me care abt li shan by making him a more distinct character. ymmv on him, but the angle of him being this Really Proud Dad to compensate the fact that he’s never had to be w po during his childhood’s an interesting angle (either that or he was bragging. there’s probably that too)

the villain's main two-faced gimmick and deceit is good. you know that moment in kfp2 where shen tells po his parents never loved him to psyche him out?? that’s literally just jindiao’s mo, so its fun

so, here’s a possibly contentious opinion: the kids...... are alright. better than alright, really. they’re good. their characters are distinct, and they act like good kid characters-- they’re not obnoxious and their interactions are nice

every other series-exclusive character has fun designs and gimmicks for the most part

cons:

lets just get this one out of the way-- the five and shifu don’t show up. they’re only mentioned in name, and the closest thing you get to a cameo is nu hai holding the tigress action figure

admittedly, not all kids are made equal, development-wise. jing (the one with the white tiger) is the most developed out of the four by virtue of the fact that the most things happen to her than others. then comes nu hai (azure blue dragon), bao (black tortoise), and fan tong (vermilion bird red phoenix), so gauge your expectations based on that

the setting.......... is very small. by that i mean there isnt a lot of new places, and the ones that are there are pretty generic. really, there’s only two that stand out in my mind (the one based on the irl hanging monastery in china, and the Criminal Village whose name i forgot)

bits of dialogue uh... inconsistency??? like, you know how in movies there are certain elements that are arguably ‘modern’ (like the concept of action figures and the like) but are otherwise justified in a lighthearted-ish version of ancient china (like the concept of Really Fast Portrait Painters in place of cameras in holiday special)-- there are mentions of pizza and other contemporary things/turns of phrases for comedic effect, so depending on how you are it can be really jarring to hear that

they essentially incapacitated po in a way halfway thru the season, mostly so the kids dont have a safety net in the form of him potentially helping them out. its..... annoying

the actual four constellations-- you know, the characters whose existence kinda are/were pivotal to the plot?? they’re all very generic kinda-jerky kung fu guys in both personality and designs. they literally just rehashed the oogway/tai lung/shen models rip

the ending...... imo is a little............. basically really similar to kfp3. if you still want to watch it, then i won’t spoil it but it kinda lost me at the climactic final battle at the end there (which is Not A Good Thing for a climactic final battle to do)

slight quibble, but all this qi terminology is extremely silly. Good Chi?? Evil Chi??? HERO CHI????

let me be a little bit cynical here, a part of me still thinks they went w the panda kids angle is bc they’d appeal to kids more and potentially get more money

other things:

the kids are voiced by actual kids, i think?? or at least really convincing adults

heres another point of contention: the 2d ink style works better in the series than in 3 proper bc its a lot more sketchy and more like ink rather than clean lineart with an ink filter on top??? idk its hard to explain

on occasion, there will be a montage and those montages will have songs in chinese??? thats fun

more species are shown!!!

referenced kfp3 Happening and even named-dropped kai. conversely, it seems that they really want to brush kfp2 under the carpet when talking about past threats that befell the panda village

apparently they forgot insects are sentient in this universe, seeing as there are multiple gross food gags where bugs are an ingredient. notable mention goes to this maggot soup thing that one of the characters eats. does that count as eating children????

you bet ur ass im using the panda village lore in au’s

ping x cart real

conclusion:

imo the series is a fun departure from canon, but you Really gotta turn off your brain to keep from pointing out potential inconsistencies towards the movies. if you’re really turned off by the fact that the five and shifu aren’t here, then its probably not gonna be fun for you to sit thru 6.5 hours of this

but if you guys are interested in fun setpieces and characters with little regard for keeping movie canon sacred, then i guess i can recommend it. its kinda like watching those movies for anime series-- with minimal having to care about them outside of that one self-contained thing

but as ive said-- last bit is a copout, perhaps even moreso than 3. its really all about the journey for this series, rather than the destination

[tumblunni]

Wait so is their name Uz or what...? I know before we (FINALLY) got an english dub of this game like a decade late and it became my FAVOURITE THING EVER, everyone used to say Yuzu for some reason. But then in the game it seemed to always say Uzu, but then the steam trading card emoticon says Uz..? And like.. there was pretty much no info on this installment of the series before the dub came out, and there’s STILL only a tiny fandom and even (annoyingly) some of the walkthroughs are wrong for certain endings. So i can’t even find out what the kanji were for Uzu originally, to have any idea on pronounciation... Man SO MANY names in this game are different between different menus, its really confusing! But I thought at least the main sidekick character was somewhat consistant!

anyway i need to know this because Uzu (redhead one on the left) needs to go on my Make A Fusion of All Of Your Favourite Characters meme even tho they have like the smallest fuckin role ever in a really badly translated game but just AAAAAA great design and sweet and cute personality and interesting dynamic of the protagonist kid being a former fairy who wished to be human, and Uzu being like her secret imaginary friend who looks after her~! its nice cos the previous assistant characters were all just serious and competant butlers, but Uzu is more like a second kid character that’s just not capable of growing up. It can get a bit sad sometimes but EXTREMELY sweet how Uzu is all ‘I don’t actually understand this humanity lesson I’m explaining, and I’ll never be capable of it, but i’m so proud of you for everything you’re doing’. Srsly its like ‘don’t go where I can’t follow’ but ‘please do, i want what’s best for you, and all us fairy siblings you barely remember are all cheering you on to achieve something we’ll never have, even if it means you’ll forget us’. Like srsly Uzu is such a sweet goofy dork who’s all ‘fairies have no imagination lol, I don’t get art’ and ‘fairies never have any bigger dream than just what they want to eat tomorrow. I want stew.’ ‘OH U~’ But like also its clear that they’re not incapable of emotion AT ALL, they absolutely fuckin adore their strange little sister that’s now a big sister and some day will be that thing called an adult and the two of them will drift apart forevermore..

And like just SERIOUSLY what little we see of Uzu is just that they care SO MUCH! Even as they struggle understanding the appeal of humanity and why protag wants to be one of those things, Uzu is still like MAXIMUM SUPPORT TIME. Just gets comedy moments from trying to support a thing they don’t know very much about, lol! Srsly its interesting and nice how much you get to know about the two of them via such few scenes, how Uzu starts off being all ‘oooh, yay, you spotted That Thing I Heard Humans Do, let me explain...’ and then it becomes completely apparant that the lazy lil sprite doesnt actually have anything beyond those two scenes of surface knowledge XD So end up teaching your big lil sibling all about the wonders of humanity! And even if Uzu is very much your opposite and very much happy-go-lucky and super confident in their identity as a fairy, they’re just so.. so... “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT TO YOU, AAAAA” *aggressive cheerleading* seriously the only time Uzu gets sad is in the endings where protagonist gives up and returns to being a fairy, even though being a fairy is Uzu’s favourite thing in the world. Its so heartwrenching to see this little pink sweetheart being all like ‘was it my fault that it all went wrong? because I didnt take it seriously enough? she was so excited about it...’ And then those bad endings also say that protagonist will eventually forget this short time as a human girl, but she can’t return to being a happy peaceful fairy like Uzu. She’ll just remember that she regrests something, even if her immortal lifespan means she’ll lose track of what it was. And OH MAN I really wonder about what her and Uzu were like before the start of the game, then?? Cos she was said to be a not very happy fairy, she was just the only one who couldnt enjoy dancing around the flowers and wished of a human’s happy ending. I wonder if Uzu was already her friend then, and followed her to the human world to look after her, even though she’s forgotten them? i mean all we know about it is that their sibling dynamic is ‘technically true, all fairies are siblings since we were made by the fairy queen’. But like, whether Uzu already knew them or was just hired for this job by the queen or maybe even just snuck along like a lil trickster cos ‘huh? a fairy who wished to be human? That sounds fun!’. Whatever their backstory is, they’re a very damn good immaurture big sibling of strange, and I love this tiny family forever. Also apparantly baby fairies hatch from lucky drops of morning dew upon the flowers each spring, which is ADORABLE! i wonder if that affects their appearance? I’d assume protagonist was a lilac or a pansy, maybe Uzu was a snapdragon or a poppy? ;3

aaa sorry im rambling its just that I REALLY LOVE THIS CHARACTER CONCEPT and i mean the game already does have more dialogue with the daughter compared to other games and explains more about how the fairies work compared to your demon butler in the last game BUT LIKE I STILL WANT MORE!!!!! i love uzu and i love protagonist but protagonist’s personality is kinda blank slate and depends on your choices. but i still love her cos that starting concept of ‘sad lonely fairy who wishes to be a human princess, gets adopted by sweet disabled former knight man as a dad’ is just like THE FUCKIN BEST PLOT and aaaa I really actually cared about her and wanted her to succeed cos there was a REASON for wanting to reach the princess ending! not just arbitrarily wanting the best score, i want to give my sweet monster child her perfect fairytale dreeeeeaaaam~

but just AAA i really love Uzu and AAA god their design is so cool too, its just a nice colourscheme with the plain black and white casual robe thing and the very bright pink hair and then the tiny mischief ponytail and the surprisingly complicated rainbow sigil wing effects~ and lol ALSO i do kinda have to love a nonbinary character, yeah tho in this case its more of the ‘ambiguous headcanon’ type, cos uzu just doesn’t get any pronouns in english, and gendered pronouns dont really exist in japanese. and the game fandom is so small that there’s no sources on whether the japanese version ever mentioned a gender in supplimenary material. Also, I mean, the dub messes up a lot of really basic stuff like gender pronouns and even name spellings within the same sentence, lol! so its not really a reliable source. But whatever, it might be reckless to assume, but I’m gonna stick with this headcanon until we get proven otherwise, I guess. And srsly Uzu’s fab style is a look I wish I could pull off with my own androgeny in real life! (and yknow probably accidentally but they’re close to trans flag colours lol)

oh and from googling all i can find out is that uzu in japanese means spiral and yuzu means pomelo melon so.. huh. That Did Not Help.

also I found that tehre were a bunch of spinoff minigame compilations for the early playstation installments in the series! its really cute to see the characters from all the different ‘generations’ getting to meet each other~ In this one that seems to be the only one with any english info (Princess Maker: Go Go Princess), its like a monopoly board game except the pieces are an all-star cast of princesses and all the events are references to events from the individual games. SO COOL!!!

and look how much sprite detail they put into a silly spinoff! O_O it sucks that these spritesheets display this way though, so i have no idea how all the parts would line up and what the animations would look like but FUCK its still really cute to see cube and uzu having a good ol hug! also is it just me or do Uzu’s face sprites look a little older? I mean sure its probably just cos this was near the end of the ps1 era and the art style had gotten more detailed, but maybe I’d like to headcanon that Uzu ended up maturing from this whole experience and like.. maybe fairies age up as they emotionally mature? (cos i mean how did the fairy queen get to be the only adult one, lol!) Or perhaps Uzu could wish to be human too in the end, and become your real sibling! it’d be so confusing to explain that your new ten year old sibling is actually 500 years older than you XD also poor faceless dad character wouldn’t be lonely now his protagochild has gone off to be the best at 63 potential careers, yknow? or haha, maybe just imagine a reverse au where you raise all the butlers and the princesses are the butlers? or the princesses are the dads and the dads are the kids? OR EVERYONE IS LUCIFON man i just rrly luv princess makerrrrr