#in spite of what boo says i think his slime rancher style art is rEAL GOOD and also these other joeys are v cute

[whatyouwantedmetosee]

Joey is doing Fine in Slime Rancher AU, for sure. (Also Boo’s Joey arts are vERY GOOD and coming up with these thoughts and designs was a lot of fun.)

What would Joey/Ink Demon look like in the Jelly rancher Au, also, would he treat Sam as a cat with pets and stuff.

oh gosh this ask has multiple parts and is gonna be long so, uh, first. INKDEMON IS ACTUALLY ALREADY EXIST: the InkyTarr takes place of the ink demon.  2. quickly answering the sammy question: absolutely. this will be addressed more later in a different post, back to Joey, I spent a long time talking with @whatyouwantedmetosee today and designing some Joey’s cause most of our Joey info was written and not drawn yet but NOW I HAVE THIS TO SHARE:

I DREW THIS AND INSTANTLY REGRETTED TRYING TO DO THIS STYLE, just gonna bother Mochi to do all the really good Slime Rancher NPC Style Art from now on,

so, in my more regular sketchy art style, here’s a few Joeys, which is why the answer to this question is uhhh complex.

in order, we have Fresh Baby New Rancher Joey that just started the ranch with Henry, Henry Betrayed And Left Me so Now I’m Forgetting How To Take Care of Anything Including Myself While I Get Distracted With Inkplorts, Joey and The Joey Henry Finds Curled Up and Nearly Dead in the Wilds, Who is Also Partially Slime Now?? more explanation below:

OKAY SO, LETS START WITH A FRESH CUPPA JOEY, Congratz Joey, this is the AU where you actually get to be buff!! If he and Henry are starting an entire slime ranch, he’s going to need to be built for it. As long as Henry is around, Joey is rather buff, fit, and healthy looking!  Most of this is self explanatory, but I need to add in the fact that Joey is Short in this AU also and totally wears special heel boots to stand same height as Henry. 

NEXT, MESS TRASH JOEY, without Henry around, Joey stops working on simple slime ranching and moves into research. He wants to get Henry back, or at least prove that Henry was wrong to leave: If he can reproduce gold plorts, well, he’ll be rolling in the dough, have all the funds for what Henry needed, etcetc. For a while he’s... fine, but then he creates Ink Plorts and everything goes downhill from there. He stops remembering to slime ranch unless he’s actively experimenting on the slimes. He stops remembering to take care of himself; nobody is going to see him, he’s all alone out here. Grooming has become a distraction. Also eating and sleeping, apparently. This causes him to lose a lot of his muscle and thin down, his hair grows out and gets scraggly. The only reason he still has fringe is he’s too impatient to let it grow out enough to pin back, so he keeps clipping it as soon as it gets in his eyes. The curl is natural,

This all leads into the reason Joey ends up out in the wilds, unable to get back: Between malnourishment and just not staying fit, Joey hardly has the energy to do regular ranching tasks, much less go deep into the wilds. It’s unknown why he felt the need to go out there, but at some point he gets attacked by the Inky Tarr. Since Inkplorts naturally have a copy and paste effect to them, this attack is what also turns him to being half slime. (and yeah, he is half inkytarr slime) His legs are heavily injured and transformed, and he’s bad at holding their shape as legs while weak and hungry. The rancher equipment automatically sends out an SOS signal, but Joey ends up needing to abandon it due to it being too heavy as he drags himself off somewhere with more shelter.

When Henry finally finds him, he’s just hardly holding onto life, only able to live this long due to the fact he’s half slime now, and able to survive on more of the natural slime resources around him. He gets to clean up some after Henry carries him back and helps him get healthy again, but all of his clothing is long trashed, so for now he’s just borrowing some of Henry’s basic clothes until they can buy him new ones, which uh, might take a while since Joey has a lot of huge debts that need to be paid off first.

Also Joey gets cold super easy as half slime, partially because the slime elements transfer heat away from the rest of his body quicker, partially cause he just doesn’t have much strength or meat on his bones anymore. He’ll pretend to be fine, like he always did, but Henry often finds him visibly shivering's and bundles him up in his coat.