#jixie rambles

[bassdaily]

There is no Official Capcom Game Canon™ hair for Bass. No unused design sketches or character art that has been released. Nothing even from canon-adjacent licensed games.

But I wonder if it might exist? Because we’ve seen his hair across various comics, and while ‘Manga / Comic & Cartoons Canon’ is not ‘Official Game Canon™’ ...weirdly enough it’s been consistent, especially compared to, y’know, Blues. (Blues, who 100% had a game canon hairstyle from his debut in MM3.)

Classic Rock’s hairstyle is drawn really uniformly. Sometimes it’s black, sometimes it’s brown, sometimes it’s desaturated navy blue, but it’s always a dark color and even with radically different art styles his hair still has the same basic, well, shape.

The same goes for Bass! Ariga’s sketch isn’t even canon for Gigamix, and we only see some hair poking out of his broken helmet in Archie comics. But like Rock, the style is consistent, and both times it’s colored in, his hair is dark. (The sketch is just not colored in. It could be light, it could be dark. There’s also a sketch of Blues on the same page... his hair isn’t colored in either.)

The Rockman & Forte manga ran from April 1998 to January 1999. From what I can gather, the “Burning Shot” short is from 1998.

Rockman Gigamix was published in 2009. The sketch Hitoshi Ariga drew of helmetless Forte was at FanExpo Canada, August 2010.

Archie's Worlds Collide crossover ran from April to August 2013.

It’s entirely possible that Kouji Izuki came up with something for the game’s manga adaption, and when asked about it on the spot Ariga drew from that, and then Archie comics kept what was previously done by the manga artists. Especially given how Archie loved to pack in references to other Mega Man ‘verses.

Conversely, any one of them could’ve gone with whatever unique design they wanted, and they didn’t. I think it’s possible that the artists and writers producing licensed franchise spin-offs might have had access to unreleased “series bible” material that we the public will never get to see because Capcom has totally forgotten this character exists in the first place. So the real question is: after Novas Aventuras, did Capcom have the wherewithal to go “hey maybe we should lay down some guidelines on how these characters are depicted”?

(Quick comparison of how helmet failure is shown for both characters in Archie comics. Rock’s hair is disheveled from the fight, yet still the right style and color.)

[bassdaily]

Was thinking about this because there’s such a stark contrast between Archie!Bass’s “Don’t touch my dog” and manga!Forte’s willingness to scrap with Gospel at the drop of a hat.

(For context: In Grand Prix [Battle & Chase], Wily orders Forte to sabotage Rockman’s Rush-car. Forte refuses, because he wants to beat him in a fair fight. Treble decides to go ahead and do the sabotage anyway, and when Forte finds out he kicks his butt. In the Rockman & Forte manga, King sends out a mind control signal that doesn’t work on Forte, but it does effect Gospel. Forte slaps him both in self-defense and to bring him back to his senses.)

1. I think part of it might be how the “Save The Cat” trope is used very heavily (and often literally) in western media. We’re hyper conditioned to this storytelling shorthand, but not all tropes are universal. There could be a cultural gap going on here. In both cases Forte is reacting to Gospel’s actions, he doesn’t instigate or act needlessly cruel. While Archie plays “Save The Cat” straight.

Archie comics: He’s not all bad, look, he loves his dog! Me: Remember that time he sucker-punched an eight year old child like two comics ago? 🙃

2. Okay wild theory but I wonder if there’s a fundamental difference in how Gospel/Treble is viewed as a sentient being. IE: in Archie comics, Treble is a dog that happens to be robotic. In the manga, Gospel is a robot who happens to be dog-shaped. I don’t think the game canon gives us much on the mental capacities of the various support units. Thoughts?

STOP THROWING HANDS WITH YOUR DOG

[oc-ask-bloges]

I had.

Thoughts.

Pressure infection au. But it’s gas based.

I’m thinking something like the sirens from mlp (don’t ask why) not like something that affects you physically beyond like… eye color or smth.

More mental. Making who ever breathes it uncontrollably aggressive.

RAMBLE ALERT RAMBLE ALERT!‼️‼️‼️

So unless you had a gas mask on before the outbreak (for whatever reason, maybe like Allo from @creator-of-creativious) or use some type of filtered breathing like gills (external or filter gills like an Axolotl.) you would be effected.

Sebastian would be basically a “big bad” with his size and power. And the fact he has GUNS.

So saying that:

The ocs that would be aggressive:

Jixy (hiding away in some back room, probably heavily injured.)

Dani (small n feisty, more prone to bloodlust as well.)

Elena (justice god. Aka “oh no.”)

Lori (she has no lungs, is not effected, but it more aggressive for sake of survival.)

Ocs who are not aggressive:

Rose (@drowning-thistle. Has lungs, but the vines in her lungs pump a constant flow of fresh oxygen. Her head would be a big foggy though, causing some of her actions to be a bit brash. (Still a sweet heart, but still dangerous considering the VINES are effected. Her infection is sped up.).)

Navi (poor thing is completely harmless and helpless wether effected or not! She’s sticking to Rose’s side for the most part.)

Nebulon (no lungs. They’ve slinked back into the void mass controlled hallways. Doors have been blocked off.)

The Non Accountables.

Jix (hasn’t come up from the bottom of the ocean.)

Rain (trying their best to find an escape route from the outside. Horribly worried for Sebastian. (Gay.))

Safe houses.

Any space that’s blocked by water on all sides is safe. But the water isn’t. The gas can’t travel through the water, but it can get into it.

Most of Rose’s cafés. The over concentration of oxygen doesn’t allow for the gas to get in. It’s still dangerous to stay for a long period of time for normal breathers.

( @trepans-apprentice @faefrosting @birbisanon @corb1n +anyone you’d think would like this stupid idea.)

[bassdaily]

IDK why, but sometimes artists try to give Bass a crazy hairstyle that imitates his silly helmet. In my opinion it never works. Which is a shame because I’ve yet to see anyone use the real (and gorgeous!) style of twin braids:

(Left: two cornrows or lead-in braids. Source: Reddit. Right: dutch or french braided pigtails. Source: Instagram.)

...which manages to echo the lines of his helmet while looking great. Anyhow I guess what I’m trying to say is please draw Bass with braids? More braids less zany anime hair.

[bassdaily]

March wrap up

Me and my hairspiracy theories...

I had a few other thoughts, but wanted to keep my initial write up a little more focused.

- Blues’ radical hairstyle change. Capcom did that in MM8. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Most adaptions went with his original MM3 hair and Archie comics went with the MM8 pompadour, both are technically game canon.

- As far as the Wilys all having the same hair color. This is a great headcanon! It’s cute! And I never want to discourage anyone’s preferences. I just don’t think it’s good evidence for actual canon. Aside from the fact that Zero and Bass as brothers is really a fanon thing... the Light siblings have different hair colors?

- I’m dying to see if the Rockman-chan manga will give us Forte hair. They already teased it by showing him take his helmet off. (…only to put on a far sillier helmet.)

That said, Rockman-chan doesn’t always stick to canon designs. Lookin’ at you, Blues. On the other hand… it’s like the only media that really gets that Forte is supposed to be an edgy recolor DeviantArt OC do not steal, and would be around the same age and build as Rock.

- FWIW, my personal preference and headcanon is purple hair, which is not and never will be game canon. These days I’ve come to accept the short manga style, but for a very long time I was a very strong proponent of medium shoulder length hair.

- As far as I’m concerned NetNavis don’t have hair or anything under their “helmets”, the infamous AutoNavi included.

- Fun stats! Here’s a breakdown of haircolors/styles reblogged here as of the end of March:

team raven locks black: 76   +team chestnut waves brunet: 4 team flaxen mane blond: 64   +team ginger redhead: 1 team awesome hair purple: 27 team snowy tresses white/silver: 24 multicolor: 13 unknown: 45

short hair: 186 medium hair: 28 long hair: 27 mohawk/undercut: 16 curly: 14 braids/dreads: 4 bald: 5

“Multicolor” needed to be evenly split (ie: 50/50), anything less was counted as the dominant color. Purple skews high due to moderator bias, white skews low on account of a large portion of white-haired Bass is ship art, which I try to limit, so idk what to say man. That is a form of moderator bias as well, I suppose.

Not counted: text posts, 2nd round reblogs, anything in the hairnalysis posts.

- Poll results!

[bassdaily]

Me: Okay between "Rollass" Week and "BassBlues" Week I've got "Dr. Cossack Big Dad Energy" Week then after "BassBlues" Week I really should get around to do a "Ruby Spears" follow up but "Yandere Mega Man" Week would be fun especially before "BassRock" Week—

Also me: shut it all down 'monster mash' week part 2 now

Me: Um?

Also me: WANNA SEE SOME CREACHERS

[bassdaily]

@chronicdelusionist​ Yeee..nnn...sss...oooo...? I remember reading two different things about this topic, and for the life of me, can only find the first one.

“Mega Man X1 Internal Design Document Posted at 30th Anniversary Event” at Protodude’s Rockman-Corner.

This piece is an official character relationship chart which [...] was written between Mega Man 5 and X1's development in 1993. [...] according to this document, Dr. Wily used Proto Man as a reference when creating Zero (bear in mind Bass did not exist at this point).

Screenshot of the relevant portion:

There’s a few things about this I find pretty interesting, like the fact there’s a dashed line between Mega Man and X (a secondary connection) — but a solid line (a direct connection) going from Proto Man -> “Reference” -> Zero Project. This suggests, to me at least, that while X may have been inspired by Rock they don’t share any actual programming or schematics. Blues and Zero, on the other hand... might? And “Reference” implies that even in the development stages of MMX1, they knew Wily didn’t just copy Blues’ programming or schematics and immediately turn around and start working on Zero. He used what he stole/learned on other [to be determined] projects, refined it, and later used that to build Zero.

(Also the other Robot Masters, bosses, minor baddies are all just grouped together as “Evil Robots”, lol sorry guys.)

The other thing I’d read was... I think... crap, I’m sorry, I can’t remember. If it comes to me and I find it I’ll update this. Assuming I didn’t imagine it, lmao. But I think it was a breakdown of the game timeline?

Basically, in The Power Fighters Dr. Wily says “I studied Megaman hoping to create a similar robot” and then accidentally developed Bassinium. So he admits yeah Bass is intentionally an edgy recolor 😂 and he was trying to duplicate Mega Man. But when exactly did he study Rock? Know who he did study... and rip off of...? Rock’s prototype, Blues.

Wily goes on to say he’s used what he learned from creating Bass to build Zero. Coincidentally we have ancillary info that Wily used copied material from Proto Man to eventually build Zero. I’m making a leap that it was on the software end, but given that Blues, Bass, and Zero all have a strong independent/rebellious streak, I don’t think it’s a stretch. (Also Bass and Zero are overpowered while Proto Man is, ah, not known for his strength. So. I don’t think it’s likely he was copying hardware schematics.)

[bassdaily]

My OTP is Bass/Fighting Everyone To Prove He’s The Strongest

[bassdaily]

#when i made this post i had no clue but leading up to today i was starting to see ‘Forte Day’ thrown around and was curious about it

Don't worry this was not info that really disseminated to the US until very recently. I'd never heard of 4/10 being anything until after I started running this blog, and even then, didn't find an explanation for it until like… within the last year or so. (And I don't pretend to be a deep lore expert by any means but I definitely dug into this the first time I heard about it and came up with nada.)

#this is probably capcom knowing their fans at the time and solidifying the pun

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking.

#i didn’t get into mega man until 2013 so there’s alot of things established before then i sometimes miss 😭

1. Nah… there's a lot things that were "established" long before Legends and Battle Network that are now completely irrelevant— amusing relics at best.

I genuinely love both versions of Rock, but the one that I grew up on was a hero who fought mindless robots, who was himself a cold unfeeling machine until he was magically turned human in a freak accident, who wasn't a little boy but a grown-ass mega MAN. Usually. Because he was also a character who was so wildly inconsistent that he could be anything, really. One of the reasons I loved Mandi Paugh's Mega Man: the Series fanfics so much was because she made such a great effort to bridge the gap between all these different portrayals.

Anyway. You didn't really miss anything. (Except Mandi's fics, which are still fun reads, especially the ones where Bass shows up.)

...and hopefully now everyone has some context for The Protomen's post-apocalyptic rock opera universe, because the "soldier of the Great Mining Wars" was their Mega Man too.

Specific to @bassforte behind the cut.

2. I mean fandom is not a competition. But also:

3. Girlfriend, 2013 was 11 years ago. You may not be at "holy crap I've been involved in this fandom longer than some y'all been on this Earth" yet but best believe it's coming. 😘

(I do love when a new movie/game/show/comic reaches a whole new audience and brings in a whole new generation of fans, and I really love it when it's a revival for older and dying fandoms. But yeah, 2013 means you got in before MM11 and that you stuck around well after most Archie comic & MM11 fans lost interest. That's nothin' to sneeze at.)

Hey, so uh, who was gonna tell me that Capcom made birthdays for the classic characters when making fake Battle and Chase licenses?

[bassdaily]

Pittoo— who was in one (1) Kid Icarus game— is on the Super Smash Bros roster, while Bass and Proto Man are relegated to cameos. Which was still more than they got from Capcom in MM11. Bass has been a playable character in more Mega Man games than there are Kid Icarus games period.

Anyhow. All this to say there’s a shameful lack of fanart of Bass interacting with Pittoo and other edgy recolors (Shadow, Dark Meta Knight, etc).

[bassdaily]

TFW large group pics of Classic characters anachronistically include X & Zero, but Bass is missing...

[bassdaily]

You’d be surprised how much art on my spreadsheet is described as “Bass pointing cannon at viewer”.

...on second thought, you probably wouldn’t be surprised at all.  o(≧▽≦)o