#redesigns are whatever nothing on the original anime's

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Thank you for answering my Origins Dragon!Marinette and Turtle!Adrien question! Please don’t worry about disagreeing with the idea; I asked for YOUR opinion and analysis on why it would OR wouldn’t work, and that’s what I got. 😌 It also made me consider meta and in-show stuff that I hadn’t before, which is cool. You mentioned wanting all of the Kwamis to be part of some sort of set of two or more, and I’d love to hear what those sets are in your head going down the full Chinese Miracle Box list and why you’d pair them together with consideration towards both the Kwami themselves and their Powers.

(Post this ask is referring to)

Oh good, I'm glad that you found it useful and not discouraging!

Talking about how to pair the Kwamis is a little tricky because of an issue that I've discussed before. That issue being that the "Chinese" miracle box seems to be about as Chinese as fortune cookies. That makes me uncomfortable because - as far as I'm aware - the Chinese zodiac is a major part of Chinese beliefs and traditions. As such, I personally feel like the box should reflect those beliefs and traditions, but I also don't know those beliefs and traditions, so I can't tell you how I'd effectively group the zodiac Kwamis in order to honor their cultural origins. I can't even be sure if my criticism is valid or just me being overly cautious!

In an ideal world where I had money to invest in this sort of thing, I'd hire a cultural consultant to work with me to design a Chinese miracle box that feels Chinese (or to tell me that I'm overthinking this and to just do whatever I want). Assuming that I'm not overreacting, this would probably mean redesigning a lot of the powers and looks so that they honor Chinese lore and not Western lore.

For example, one thing that I know for sure is that black cats are not unlucky in China. They're actually symbols of good luck (all cats are), so a Chinese box would not have the implied good luck/bad luck thing that we get with Ladybug and Chat Noir. My limited research has also raised some doubts about ladybugs being a go-to symbol of good luck or creation in China, but I'm a lot less confident about that one being a bad choice as the association may exist. I couldn't find anything definitive one way or the other. This leads me to think that, if the association exists, then it's probably a bit obscure, meaning that a Chinese box would probably go with a different animal if we were trying to be culturally accurate to what a Chinese-inspired box would really look like.

I can say with reasonable certainty that Creation is associated with the masculine yang and Destruction is associated with the feminine yin, so Tikki should possibly feel masculine to feminine Plagg. At the very least, their spots in the miracle box should probably be reversed with Plagg in the black and Tikki in the white since yin is black and yang is white?

[Image Description: center of the original miracle box showing that ladybug earrings are placed in the black part of the yin yang symbol while the black cat ring is in the white]

I also known that white rabbits being associated with time, watches, and umbrellas comes from Alice in Wonderland and not China. Are you starting to see why I'm doubting the cultural accuracy of the miracle box?

The alternate way to approach this is to remove the possible issue of Chinese culture being treated as "mystical" or nothing more than ornamentation by making the Chinese miracle box into the miracle box of no specified culture. Since that's kind of what the box already is in terms of deeper meanings and cultural ties, I think we can go that route for this discussion since we have taken a moment to acknowledge the potential issues with the box's existing design and why that's leading me to take this route as - to me - this seems to be the only way to stick to canon's lore while avoiding potential further insults to Chinese culture.

If we went to my ideal extremes with this approach, we'd actually massively cut down the number of miraculous in the box because I think that there are way too many miraculous! Who needs nineteen "unique" powers to arm and fight one villain? This is extra true since there's no real theme to the miraculous beyond the initial setup of Creation/Destruction + five random powers followed by the addition twelve more random powers with no clear ties to any culture or theme other than the look of the Kwamis that grant the powers.

But that's getting real extreme, so for this ask, we won't go there. Instead, I'll talk about some general ideas for grouping the powers that we already have and some ideas for how you could fix the randomness of our current powers to make them feel like they make sense.

To start, I love the fact that our two main heroes are supposed to be a pair power wise. That's a lovely way to approach your lore and is why I think that they should have grouped the other miraculous, too. Why are Creation and Destruction the only set? Why aren't the others in any sort of group? Why do these miraculous have the powers they do? What ties them to this box and not another box?

There are a few ways to approach pairing the other miraculous. You can come at it from a theme perspective such as the fact that both the snake and the rabbit are all about time. You can also look for opposites such as the turtle being all about defense and the dragon being more about offense. You can even go more broad and say that a given group of miraculous is all aspects of one type of power such as the peacock, the goat, and the ladybug all feeling like aspects of creation. There's really no clear way to go about this because the current powers are so freaking random!

When I approach this stuff, I don't just come up with powers. I come up with the lore and let that help guide the powers or I shape the lore around the powers I want to use until both things make sense. For example, it makes sense that Creation would have some magical being guiding it. It also makes sense that Creation would either create Destruction for balance or that they both popped into existence together so that there was always a balance. Once you have that, you say, "Okay, what other Forces would these two want in order to help guide the universe? What can't they do or what do they do consistently enough that they might want to hand it off?"

Going from there, you start to come up with ideas like maybe they wanted Time to have a physical embodiment so that they could get some guidance on the long term effects of the things that they were making, so that's Fluff coming online. But Time is a lot and they liked their balance, so maybe Sass was brought online too in order to balance Fluff with Fluff being focused on what was and what could be while Sass is focused on what is, thereby giving Fluff someone to ground her. Or maybe you even add in a third Kwami to be some sort of historian who remembers the past while Fluff is the future and Sass is the now.

Another thought path is that most things are not pure Creation or pure Destruction. You must destroy to create. When you make bread, yeast consumes sugar to create air bubbles. Creation and Destruction working together. So maybe Tikki and Plagg wanted to make "children" who could do what they couldn't do solo and that's how we got the peacock?

No matter how you go about this, I really don't think that there's a great way to explain/group all nineteen miraculous, especially if you add in the eagle and Fei's wacky prodigious with it's animal abilities. It's just too random! But I do think that there's a lot of potential in strong subsets of the ones we get in canon, especially if you're allowed to edit the powers or the Forces a bit to make them fit their supposed Force or granted power better. I've talked before about how I'd mess with Lucky Charm to remove the odd Luck association and focus on Creation and that's what I'd do with most of the miraculous because, right now, most of them don't make much sense.

For example, Ziggy - the goat - is supposed to be the Kwami of Passion and that somehow gives the power to create anything you want? I know creatives are passionate, but that still doesn't fit in my mind. It would make more sense for this to be an inspiration power like the pig or for the Force to change to Creation and Ziggy is just a lesser ladybug for some reason? And Stompp - the Ox - is Determination, but I'd actually label his shield power as an aspect of Protection, making him in some sort of pairing with the turtle. Self defense verses defense of others?

In short, the canon lore is a disaster that needs major work to feel solid which leads to lots of paths for fixing the mess. In my opinion, the best way to go about fixing it is to take the element that worked best - the Creation/Destruction pairing - and expand that out to make strong, logical lore for the other Kwamis and their associated powers. Lore that probably won't be rooted in any one culture because no culture seems to be a solid match for the lore that canon is using, which is only concerning because of the current obvious associations with China and that's not even touching on the whole Tibetan monks + Chinese culture issue. Go check out the post I linked at the start for my thoughts on that which basically sum up to, "I am not even remotely qualified to talk about this one, but it seems like a terrible idea."

(Once again, reminder that I'm not Chinese or otherwise deeply informed on Chinese culture. I'm just a person who tries her best to respect other cultures and the miracle box sets off a lot of warning bells for me. Those warning bells could always be a false positive, so you shouldn't take my thoughts as some sort of final say on this topic. Please feel free to look into this on your own and form your own opinions.

If you are Chinese or otherwise educated in these topics, then please feel free to reblog this or send an ask giving me some additional context as I really do love learning about this stuff, but it's near impossible to research! I spent a good hour talking to a local librarian trying to find books or articles in our library that talked about the Chinese zodiac from an academic perspective and we found nothing. I've got a few interlibrary loan requests out to academic libraries in our library network though and I'll follow up on this if those books end up having information that adds to the discussion.)

[starsnsparkles]

okay i’ve calmed down a little from the massive shitstorm that happened when the winx reboot teaser originally dropped, so now i want to completely and utterly rip into this generic, over-detailed monstrosity of a design that they decided to go with...

... starting with bloom!

oh my sweet, sweet baby, what have they done to you… first off, say goodbye to her iconic bangs, now we have… anime bangs? the braids would look great if her hair was let down & made to be wild, but no, we had to slap on her the mew mew new zakuro’s ponytail which makes them both look out of place and cartoonish with how out of place & massive it looks on them… the outfit raises SO many questions. like, huh? what *is* that crop top doing? like why does it have 1 shoulder pad? why does she have the flame arm decoration on only one arm? the other looks so bare in contrast. what IS that skirt? like, what are those ruffles? they look so random and out of place, her whole outfit is making me go ??? they’re, AGAIN, trying to shove her in pink :^) those boots are whatever, and the wings are overly-detailed, but fine. all of their wings are doing too much ngl, especially if this is the first transformation, but hers is one of the better ones

now onto stella!

the worst case of babyface i’ve seen in the reboot, and that headband with stars ain’t making it better. it makes her look like a middle schooler SOB the top is doing too much for a base transformation, like bloom’s, but at least hers kind of resembles sun rays so it’s… passable? i still want it gone & redesigned tho. the wings, again, doing too much, i like the sun imagery. now i’ve heard people discussing that stella will stay “faily of the shining sun” rather than “fairy of sun & moon” and if that’s true… then i fear it truly is over lads.... i’ll save my moon stella spiel because i’ve already written a post about it, but the “moon” part of stella could play such a huge role in her character and it’s NEVER been used to its full extent and i die inside every time i remember that :^) and if the reboot doesn’t even try? i’ll go fuck myself then uwu

now for flora...

the best out of the batch. nothing really more to say. you can’t really go and make a bad flora transformation technically, just slap her in pink & green, with pretty flowers and voila, there’s flora. girly concepts work on a girly girl what a surprise! the petal skirt is very nice, i will say, although we’ll see later on how horrible it translated to 3d animation :^) her wings suffer the same as the rest, but they’re more toned down so they’re better, her hair is also doing a bit too much, i think the braid with flowers is great, but get rid of those two flower odangos and she’s pretty solid.

musa time!

*insert here a long-winded rant about her face looking generic af when previously we had a very good model shown in the magazine for her monolid look that potrayed her asian heritage more* but of course, we can’t have nice things, so here ya go, a downgrade :) anyway back to the design. so basically, musa’s design pays omage the most to her og magic winx design, so it looks pretty okay. i wish she had headphones, but i like the braids. now i did say the dress pays omage to her og design, but the added details on it to ‘make it look updated” are pretty nonsensical as well. it’s the bloom thing all over again. what is that small gap that’s covered with transparent material? we shall never know. it’s there to be there. 0 purpose. remove that and the design is so much better. what irks me about her wings is that they’re the wrong colours so they don’t even look like they belong to musa. like all others, they’re doing too much, but out of the bunch, hers are the worst. shape is meh, but the colours ruin them.

and now, the girl that suffered the most… my sweet, sweet tecna...

to all tecna truthers, it is a sad day indeed. tecna went from the most unique and wel-thought out magic winx design to… this. just one of many. literally nothing about her costume is revolutionary. nothing looks good. nothing says fairy of technology, save that thing in her hair. that’s literally it. i just don’t even have the words to describe how bland this is, which is horrible to say, because this is tecna! hey! fairy of technology! a fairy that literally connects the two worlds of a fairy, a being that is supposed to be this untamed magical concept connected with the nature & the world, with technology, the futuristic & more grounded concept that explores probabilites in a totally opposite side than magic. like, SHE IS REVOLUTIONARY but nah. here is a generic purple fairy. i want to PERISH.

and last but not least, aisha!

aisha & stella look like babies it’s not even funny actually. now why is she BLUE. aisha had a great thing going for her in the og where her outfit was green & her powers were pink, which contrasted well, and she was still a water / fluid fairy, so she really stood out from the rest of her archtype. and now. she’s BLUE. we already have bloom. we don’t have a green fairy. is this the part where they try to leave a spot open for roxy? yeah we love roxy, but aisha deserves to keep her og colour more than her, you know, THE aisha, who is objectively a bigger part of the winx brand than roxy. her dress is again, doing too much while not really making sense. it looks sloppy and overly-detailed with little reason to be so. flora & aisha are set apart from the rest solely bc their midriffs are covered & that’s about it. her wings are also too similar to bloom’s. my god why are they trying to bloom-ify her i don’t know.... the beads look nice tho, but they don’t feel like aisha. aisha is this cool, admirable, hero character that loves sports & adventure, and i’m getting “mum we have sports day tomorrow” vibes here. misery… and apparently she’s still “fairy of waves” so if they get rid of morphix, which was masterful addition to the power scale, i’d be ACTUAL MISERY

as for animations & civilian looks...

people say they’re eating and i just wanna know WHERE. i like the casual outfits more than the transformations by a mile, and that’s not saying much. musa & tecna’s outfits looked better in the magazine feature/leaks, musa especially suffered. stella’s hair fuses with her outfit constantly. and even if it were good, the animation downgrades everything though. it looks like it came from disney junior, ffs, it looks just a tiny bit better than miraculous ladybug and i can’t take that show seriously because of how bad the animation is. it’s giving fucking, rooster teeth studios with 6 employees and a 6 month deadline. it looks atrocious, i can’t even describe it SOB

closing thoughts - this literally looks like winx for toddlers. i’m sorry, so much hype for “we wanna age up our target audience after nick ruined it” and then we get this. dollar store animation, fumbled transformations, missed opportunities. i was beyond excited and probably coping back when the animation test aired. now i’m fully in IT’S SO OVER downslide. you hate to see it! :)

p.s people are saying these forms might actually be enchantix. baby if this is enchantix? we’re even MORE COOKED

[damnfandomproblems]

I agree with 4119 for the most part

But the thing with race is that it is almost always done with the intent of erasure or "fixing"

It's never "I wanted to explore this character as if they had a different ethnic background in this setting"

It's always "this character would look BETTER with this specific skin color and that's all I'll add to them and ignore all other culture aspects I could give the character relating to their skintone because I actually don't care about representing different people. I just want to be viewed as inclusive and unproblematic by my peers and I do that by changing the characters skin and nothing else because all I care about it what skin color people have. Also I attack others for calling me out on this by telling them all they care about is the characters skin and asking why they care so much that I made the character with *x* skintone. Ect. Ect. Ect."

Listen we wouldn't have so much problem with this if people were actually creative about it.

There's nothing and I mean NOTHING wrong with wanting to explore a character with a different skin tone or culture or whatever.

It's when people have this attitude about it like the character is somehow better in someway for having an either lighter or darker skin tone. And yes I'm talking about both. Because both whitewashers and blackwashers do the exact same thing and have the exact same arguments as to why they think it's acceptable to racewash when they are both wrong.

It's supposed to be like race bending. It's supposed to be a fun way to explore a character in different ways.

It is NOT meant to be a way to "one up" the "Whites/Blacks" OR to belittle the original design. Not even "edits" are good because there's actually zero thought or research going into them. I've seen a significant amount of edits for middle eastern characters who are paler or tanned being made to look extremely dark even though alot of middle eastern countries and ethnicities are pale or lighter in color making the characters original design accurate actually.

People get so mad at characters like that because of their moms basement preception of reality that they don't even know what people from other countries even look like.

Never have I seen an actually well thought out redesign of a character where they actually explore said character with a different ethnicity and culture. It's always "wow *x* looks a million times better now and is so accurate to real life"

And hell this 8snt even touching upon the fact that some people mistake tan characters from somewhere like Europe or America or east and south(south east?) Asia as black. Not even Indian or Spanish or even Mexican. Not even native American or anything else. Just black. And if that's not telling how horrible people who blackwash are. Literally no better than white washers.

Or the fact that so many people assume Asian characters are automatically white because they don't have "Asian eyes" or yellow toned skin. (or the fact that alot of people will redesign pale Asian anime characters with yellow skin and slanted eyes to make it more "realistic" which as an Asian myself I consider that to be damned fucking racist)

There are ways to explore race in characters. There are ways to do so respectfully and without belittling the original ethnicity of the character. But that's not what people do. People just want to express their internal racism and prejudice and narrow and ignorant views on the world and it's people without being criticized by their peers.

Trust me I would not mind if someone took a character and decided to explore how their life would unfold and how characters might treat them (depending on how the world and it's people view such ethnicities) under a different ethnicity or culture. I would not mind if someone just wanted to see how they could design a character and their meanings but using a different culture. (like how two different flowers could have the same meaning. Or how different colors have different meanings. A character with the colors meaning passion might be designed with a different color of the same or similar meaning in a different culture), or how a character might choose a different path in life due to their culture or how they chose the same path despite their culture. there is just so much you can do but all people care about is the fucking skin and "how much better the character is now" with a different skin.

I hope that makes sense.

Posting since this is a reply to a previous problem.

[cosmicjoke]

I see all these people hating on the new Trigun series because they dared to redesign Vash’s character and create an original story line.  These types of criticisms drive me crazy.  It has nothing to do with whether it’s actually any good or not, or whether they’ve done the character justice, it’s just bitching and moaning because it’s not an exact duplicate copy of the thing I grew up with.  Pff, whatever.  I think the animation looks beautiful, and I can’t wait to get into it.  I’m gonna’ be starting it later tonight hopefully.

[10hourshift]

Stupid/silly rant abt something that probably only I care abt xd

(god i spent so much time on this)

So, for the last two days I've tried to make a redesign of the shadow-magical-girl chica outfit

This one ⬆️⬆️

And it literally sucks so much* that it leaves me with no idea to redesign it without changing everything from it

*in regards of design according Ann's Character, not if the outfit in itself, that is actually really cute*

So I'm just going to point out some things that bother me and mention what I think it would work instead

The outfit as it is

Look, i know this might be a personal bias, BUT magical transformations should be fun!!The excuse of "it's magic, it can do whatever it wants" gives us the opportunity to make cute outfits and stuff!!

Look, the dress is cute, alright, but adding a little bit more of details can really seal the deal here, maybe a bow in there, or some chains if we are going w a more "edgy" design, or adding a few markings on the boots to make them less flat. (Look i know that the design also can not be overly complicated bc the model would be hell to animate, but this girl needs accessories!)

Look, if you added a few random things over the original design it would make it a little bit more interesting, you could call it a day, right? Well yes, but that's what takes me to my second point...

This design is nonsense!!

Look, magical transformations are usually based in a certain theme or idea surrounding the character. Here are some examples

So, with that in mind, what can get get from chica transformation? (That story wise is supposed to show her growth as a person bc it shows that she accepted "her shadows"*)

*what are the shadows anyway, opposite personalities, their biggest fears or just ~bad vibes~?)*

Well, nothing, being the look so basic, and even with the long hair, something that is uncharacteristic of chica, she doesn't look like herself (you can edit the eyes and say it's joy, and it would look more credible) and it's only a problem for Ann, because both Freed and Bonnie have transformations that show their characters

This one is more of a fusion of Freddy and Fred, with the school uniform for Freddy (being his most recognizable look), and the vest for Fred (i want to remember the outfit that Fred uses in the wolf in sheep clothing has a black vest, this one could be representing that but idk)

This one does a Great job, because shows a lot of Bonnie personality (his love for the guitar w the pick, the characteristic hairdo that he does when playing, even the outfit is more "rock" idk how to explain)

So, how did this happen?

Well it's really simple, Chica doesn't have any personality of her own, or things she's recognizable for.

Both Freddy and Bonnie have things that they are known for (Fred and the Yaoi guitarist), that are used in the transformation, Chicago on the other hand isn't recognized for anything else beyond being The Girl™ of the band, in that sense, the transformation does a nice job representing that.

But Chica is more than that

In the series we see different aspects of her, she likes having and supporting her friends, she likes sewing and making clothes, she's the last one to give up on anything, she started a band with the trouble kid, an apathetic dude, a micro niche celebrity and the strange new kid, and somehow she made it work! So there's really no excuse to have her as basic as that.*

Oh hey btw i did make a design for her, but as I said before its really different from the original, and then I realized it kinda looks like @cinnabundolly12 Design--- this one that is waay cooler than mine, so I gave up and made this strange rant

*to be completely fair, Chica has a lack of troubles or conflicts of her own, most of them are related to the whole group, she has a little self doubt one chapter and then sings her song and that's it, she's also very bland as a character xd*

I just put the drawing here bc i liked how the body came out and I will probably delete the file from my phone later

I based the design from here

And it just follows a star theme, i used that bass I found on Pinterest lol. Also I did try to implement some elements from the original but lol ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[omeletcat]

ALRIGHT so in my game there are 2 player characters, the player can switch between these 2 when needed to fit different situations of battle, that way the game stays interesting and engaging. This character is called Rae, i themed her around fireworks and her powers are also fireworks, she can set them off and shoot them away, she is designed to have a close range attack pattern, that currently consists of 1 a blast of fireworks into a direction 2 a single bomb that does aoE damage after it explodes 3 a slice with a saber that gives her a boost/dash whatever she passes through during this dash takes damage. the problem now is how i want to make these fireworks look, I realized that whenever i try and make it look like it is blasted into a single direction it looks like confetti or multiple fireballs, and that is NOT what i want.

This is how that looked, like a bunch of confetti after this i tried redesigning the firework and ended up with this

here it definitely looks more like actual fireworks, but i noticed that in the second image, when i tried making a single frame of the attack animation where the firework .. bits are blasted towards the enemy, that instead of it looking like fireworks it looks like a bunch of small fireballs and that is also ugly.

instead of it looking like actual fireworks, it looks like a bunch of fireballs, and i don't want it to look like fire caus that is way to overdone, the fact that i even came up with fireworks is one of my most original idea's around her character, originally she was basically a genderbend zuko (i love atla but the angry fire character is a trope at this point)

so then i made this

someone told me that it would look cool if i made Rae shoot smth that then explodes into a ball of fireworks, caus that is what fireworks usually look like, but this also looks off, now it doesn't have any BANG to it, its just fireworks or very weird confetti, it doesn't blast into any direction making it seem less dangerous and scary then the other versions. But how do i make it look that way? i have thought of a bunch of things but nothing rly works i am now currently BEGGING you to help me out, if you have an idea or maybe a type of firework i could use as a reference i would be SO SO SO thankfull, i am actively looking for any kind of critique or help or anything at all i can use to improve my art for my game, so if you have ANYTHING pls comment or reblog!! tysm!

[spinningbuster98]

Honest opinion on every Sonic adaptation you know :)

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:Admittedly I've never flully watched (same goes for the other 90's shows). Not too interesting, has jack shit to do with the games, but I guess it's fairly entertaining

Sonic Satam: Again, never watched it but like a lot of people have said it's basically your typical 90's environmental cartoon with a dash of Sonic kinda sorta. I don't even want to critisize it too much for not being very Sonic-y since....honestly have you seen the kinds of cartoon video game adaptations that were coming out at those times? Captain N? Ruby Spears Megaman? Faithfulness to the source material just wasn't a thing back then so I don't wanna be too harsh on Satam for this. I also refuse to critisize it for the effects it's had on the fandom in the long run (y'know Archie, people wanting the Freedom Fighters in the games etc) mainly because I personally believe it's unfair to judge a product by the effect it's had years later, especially if it's due to the actions of later developers and or fans. By this logic then SA1 should be demonized as an absolute travesty, because without it many of the issues that would plague the games in the 2000's would not have existed and 06 especially would not have been a thing.

Sonic Underground: I know next to nothing about it except the premise is so stupid I kinda love it and the theme song....I actually kinda like it!

Sonic OVA: I understand why people love it, especially in comparison to the american adaptations...but personally it's almost as guilty as them for their lack of faithfulness (Knuckles being "Sonic's best friend"? Sonic being a bit of a dick to Tails? Whatever the fuck Eggman has for Sarah?), in fact I kinda hold it against the OVA a bit more, since it was made by Japanese developers, so the usual excuse of the american manuals being extremely simplified therefore not giving american writers enough material to work with (which I never even bought fully, because look at the differences between game and satam Eggman even at a glance c'mon) couldn't apply here. It does have my favourite version of Metal though, and the animation is great from what I remember.

Sonic X: I have some fond memories as it technically was my introduction to the series, but looking back it sorta introduced a good chunk of characterization issues that would plague the 2000's, mainly Amy. I don't even have much to say about Chris honestly.

Archie Sonic: Never read it fully but man was it a hilarious mess from all that I've seen. Though I gotta admit I really liked the character of Nicole and how the series evolved her past her Satam origins. If there's one character I kinda miss after Archie's cancellation that's her.

IDW: I don't read it since it's never grabbed my attention. I guess I agree with most of the criticisms thrown at it, though I don't necessarily have an issue with it basically being Archie 2.0 since it's pretty obvious that a big chunk of its reader base used to be from Archie. I mean think about it: if Sega were to can Sonic as a game series but then someone were to make a spiritual successor that is 100% identical to it (more so than the likes of Freedom Planet) except for names and characters we'd all jump ship and see it's being almost identical to its predecessor as a positive. IDW is basically aimed at former Archie fans and that's okay, though that doesn't exempt it from criticism. Other than that I don't have a whole lot to say, I find it to be pretty small potatoes when it comes to bad game adaptations.

Sonic Boom: Very random and unnecessary adaptation, never been too big on the redesigns and even the show's whole comedy shtick never gelled. Honestly from what little I remember Amy was kind of insufferable and Sticks wasn't much better. I do like some of the memes that have spawned from it (mainly the Knuckles approves meme).

Sonic Movie: Ehh... I wasn't big on the whole "Sonic gets isekaie'd" into our world premise since day 1 and that hasn't changed for me. My main issue is that Sonic....is not really Sonic to me. To me what makes Sonic as a character stand out is his carefree, adventurous attitude, his purity mixed with a bit of cockiness and occasional aggressiveness, and his independence. Movie Sonic has very little of these qualities, especially the last, as the whole "Snic is a little kid who wants a family" shtick just isn't Sonic to me. To me that's your typical kid character dressed in a Sonic suit. Even Pontaff Sonic, for as jokey as he was, still held those key qualities for me. And I just don't like Knuckles' whole "super honorable warrior" thing he's got going, can't even explain why, it just rubs me the wrong way I guess.

The humans are boring. Yeah yeah Tom and Maddie are this and that and they're better than other human char-listen: wanna know what's my problem with some human characters in the series? Human characters are inherently "normal", and "normal" is not what you wanna be in a series that's about anthropomorphic animals going on fun adventures. Eggman works because he's a character who was created to fit into this series. Guys like the president in SA2 or the Gun Commander were not. Unless they're background characters, or secondary, you wanna give your human characters some form of whimsy or quirky personality, or hell make them more action/adventure oriented, like an Indiana Jones type of character, otherwise all the screentime they have is gonna feel like a huge waste of space to me as I'll just want to go back to the fun animal characters.

Speaking of Eggman, while Carrey turns out a great performance since....he's Jim Carrey, I can't help but feel even his Eggman's a bit lacking. Yeah he' goofy and funny and all that, but a good part of what I like about game Eggman is how much of a manchild he is, and not just with his design and overall attitude: when things stop going his way he loses his shit, throws tantrums, stomps his feet. It's both a source of entertainment...but it's also what makes him dangerous because due to his childish personality he may just decide to launch a nuke at a city...with HIMSELF still in it just because he's that much of a sore loser! I don't get these vibes from jimbotnik, to me he seems a bit too calm and collected, and that, in turn, makes him less entertaining than he could be.

Maybe I should give the movies proper watches? Because i admit I haven't watched them fully, just tons of clips on YT, enough to cover the most important bits, so maybe I'm being unfair...but honestly even the humor of some of those scenes is just not up my alley, yeah Colors' humor is also very hit and miss and in many ways not appropriate to the series, but at least in that case I still have a game to enjoy that's separated from the humor.

Call my cynical but I'm convinced that, in a few years, people will start looking at these movies in a not so positive light, because once the hype about it being "the best game movie adaptations ever" dies down people will start analyzing them further....and I have this feeling they won't hold up.

[kiwikarpart]

Mew Berry Revamp/Redesign

I got the urge to try redesigning Mew Berry from Tokyo Mew Mew because...well I don't have a strong reason to. I just got a bunch of ideas for it and chipped away at putting them into a redesign. This is also labeled as a revamp because I didn't worry about sticking to established lore or design rules for this series, only wanted to play dress up and put my own spin on this character.

Before we get into my redesign, I want to briefly talk about her original design and weapon.

This is a drawing of her original design. While there are parts I like, there are also parts that bother me. Why is she wearing a choker and a thigh ring? Why is white such a big part of her outfit when she's (likely) based off a red berry? Why is it so frumpy?(ok I know why, but that doesn't mean I have to like it). These aren't necesarily flaws, but they are things I want to change in my version.

Then there's her weapon.

Like her outfit, there are parts that I like, but I decided to change it because of the parts I don't like.

Finally her(uncolored) design for TMM Return.

I think it succeeds at changing the design without losing its recognizability. Unfortunately for me, most of the things I didn't like are still here. Not that I blame the designer, there's a good chance they couldn't make big changes to her official design because it needed to resemble the original to some degree. But my redesign doesn't need to do that, I can do whatever I want with it! On that note...

Design Revamp

Might as well rip the bandaid off with my biggest change: she's themed after carrots now. Sacrilage, I know. But I wanted her new color to be orange, and between the Cloudberry and the Carrot, I was more inspired by the latter choice. If it still feels weird that she's not fruit themed anymore, remember that 3 of the 5 members from the original story aren't fruit themed either, so it's not super jarring.

I also gave her another theme, something I'd want to do with all the Mew Mews if I get far enough. Best way for me to explain this is by describing the transformation sequences. Mint moves like a ballet dancer, Lettuce does moves, Pudding maybe emulates an acrobat, then the others have nothing. I think it'd be better to make each character resemble a performance art of some kind(and by that I mean something you do on stage, gonna be pretty loose with the term). For no particular reason, I wanted Berry's magical girl outfit to resemble a magician, so I tried doing that with a coat and bow combo. Added some ribbons because of her attack name, then gave her some pigtails to add more symmetry, gave her some color, and:

This post isn't over yet though. Because I also want to do a...

Character Revamp

Small warning: I haven't read the original manga in years and never watched the anime. I was only able to re-read the 1st volume of A La Mode. I will definitely miss out on some details in my revamp, so try to keep that in mind.

As for the revamp, I'm not actually going to change too much. Instead I want to do more with parts of Berry's character that aren't explored well.

I doubt the fish out of water trope hasn't been done to death at this point, but it makes so much sense for Berry. She's an average girl that ends up going to a school full of rich kids, then joins an established group of magical girls with no experience as one. If there was ever a situation to feel out of place it would be this one. Berry would doubt herself a lot at the start of A La Mode because of this, especially since she wasn't intended to become a magical girl. However, that doesn't mean she's too inexperienced to be a good magical girl. After all, Berry wasn't guaranteed a spot at her school. She had to work hard and study for it, but she had the perserverance and skill to do it. Once she realizes this, she'll gain more confidence in herself and be a more effective team member.

The second thing I'd want to expand on is her relationship with Tatsuku. I've got enough opinions on this to make a separate post about it, so I'll spare you guys from the rave/rant for now. But the main thing I'd want to change is Berry's feelings about starting a relationship. There are small hints that Tatsuku and Berry have romantic feelings for each other in the 1st volume, and Berry's response to these feelings is to push them away. I think the main reason for this is because she had a hard time processing romantic feelings for someone's that's always been her friend. I also think it could be more interesting if Berry was afraid of jumping into a relationship. Her peers at school assume she's dating him because they're close, and Tatsuku jokes about them getting married at the start of A La Mode, but there's something about that Berry doesn't like. In her mind being Tatsuku's girlfriend means fancy dates and huge romantic gestures and she's not ready for that. She loves him, but hates the thought of being lovey-dovey with him right away. But she can't articulate these feelings, so she avoids confronting them instead.

Extra Tidbits

There are a few more things to talk about, but they don't need their own section so I'm cramming them into this one.

-Berry only gets fused with rabbit DNA. The cat DNA was barely part of her orginal design anyway so I cut it

-Berry doesn't become the new leader while Ichigo is gone because it makes no sense. She's barely been a magical girl and has no experience working with the other members. Mint is the team leader instead

-The Mew Mews don't work at a cafe anymore. I prefer Cheralla's idea of them being in a band

-Berry role in the team is a supportive one. She's a backup vocalist in the band and uses her magic to buff attacks and mobility

-Berry's debue in the band isn't handled well, which is what gives their fans the impression that she doesn't add much to the group. This adds to Berry's insecurities about being out of place

-Berry's new weapon doubles as a microphone and a magician's wand. The designs are slightly different so people don't make connect the dots

Okay, NOW the post is over. The next character in this maybe series will be Mint and I can't promise when she'll get a post.

You made it all the way down here? I appreciate that! Have some bonus sketches as a reward!

[miniisside]

Was anyone going to tell me Black☆Rock Shooter got a new anime this year, or was I supposed to just find that out on accident.

Was drawn while watching the first 3 episodes

[soupsnspoons]

everything behind your thena redesign thought process 🤲 hand it over

OKOKOKOKOKOK

first off, apologies if this ends up sounding messy and rambly, im very excited and im not gonna proof read this after sdjkgnbdsjk

second, i dont remember half the stuff that went on in my head since it was way too fast-paced to keep up with and again. it was 2am.

okay now on to the thoughts i *do* remember

here's original young thena's design for reference:

(sidenote, there apparently is no picture of her with her headphones where she doesnt look sad and/or traumatized so.)

do you see that bunny bag she has? the bunny bag that is never mentioned or alluded to anywhere in the game because its canonically just. something that has no significance to her character or story?

well *I* like bunnies, think more people should, and believe that athena loved bunnies AND SPACE like the awesome person she is so i shoved all that into her design!!!!!!

(ALSO if you would go to ashen’s blog and look for their art, youd see some pictures of their young athena design which SHES SO CUTE OH MY GOD and you might notice that the antennae look kinda like a certain animals ears)

since she doesnt really get much backstory other than things that surrounded gyaxa, it gives me total freedom to be the sole person deciding her canon state as a kid!!

so im saying right here right now, athena has/had a bunny and space obsession.

(and because i always have to tie my headcanons to myself in some way shape or form, i hc shes really good at rhythm games and her favorite game is bunny hop from rhythm heaven <33)

(she has bad taste in rhythm heaven games <33)

TIME TO TALK SPECIFICS

i wanted to show more of a difference between her 18 and 11yo selves without doing anything too drastic so i made her kid pallet more blue than yellow, the opposite of her lawyer fit

i also gave her pigtails so that she looks more child-like, and to give more of that bunny feeling

of course i had to keep her bangs the same!! she wouldnt look much like athena without those funky bangs

OH OH OH ALSO HER HEAD PUH-HOHN-EES

okokok so yknow how her headphones were made by metis?

well why not cater to her daughters interests and make them space bunny themed?

i like the idea more than i like the execution but it wasnt bad by any means jsdkhngjksd

her bracelet was nothing special, i just wanted her to have some accessory and wasnt feeling super creative at the time

yeah i know she has her whole moon necklace thing, but i dunno i just. didnt like it?

theres nothing wrong with it i just dont like it

anyway, her boots seem to be the last thing i can think of at the moment to talk about but is honestly the most boring part

theyre just boots that look like bunny feet, but theres a secret on the bottom...

THE BOTTOMS LOOK LIKE THIS

YES i stole this straight from Maxwell DeSoto do NOT ask who that is and YES i know that rabbits dont have paw pads but SHUT UP THIS IS MY REDESIGN I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT WITH THEM

ahem

anyway

might follow this up if i think of anything else, or for an update, or whatever

thanks for coming folks, youve been an amazing crowd.

(this is MUCH shorter than i thought it would be, youve been spared. for now.)

[365days365movies]

March 1, 2021: The Hobbit (Review)

Is “quaint” a good word here?

Maybe its the beautiful backgrounds, maybe it’s the stylized designs that make me think of Christmas specials, maybe it’s the faithful take on a classic story that I loved as a kid, but...I dunno. Quaint’s the first thing that comes to mind here for me, for whatever reason.

All I know is that I did enjoy this movie well-enough...even if it’s not my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a great story, and I do love the original Tolkien tale very much...but I don’t know if I can say this was my favorite adaptation or not.

Now, it got some things right that the Jackson movies didn’t, at last as far as I’m concerned. Thorin’s pretty good in this film, Gollum is great (as always), and it accurately sums up the story in a single movie without too much omitted (I do miss Beorn, though). But here’s the thing: the things that I think Jackson’s movies did wrong outnumber what this film did right.

You know, the weird addition of Tauriel and Legolas, the added Lake Town plot with fuckin’ Alfrid, the entire Azog thing, the fucking NECROMANCER thing, Rada...well, actually, I like Radagast. He was fun.

And that’s not to say that Jackson’s movies did nothing right. Quite the contrary! I mean, Martin Freeman is a PERFECT Bilbo Baggins, and basically everybody is perfectly cast, to be honest. And that includes what I think is the best part of the films: Smaug, as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch. And yeah, that motion capture footage is hilarious, but it pays the fuck OFF, what can I tell ya? I mean...come on.

Smaug in these movies is fucking AMAZING, and I genuinely love him. And...well, you know what, let’s actually get into the Review. Enough navel-gazing here. Here’s the Recap (Parts 1, 2, and 3), if you’d like to read that first! OK, let’s get this done and Reviewed!

Review

Cast and Acting: 7/10

Given that this is an animated film, this is an interesting category to grade. I’ll be doing so based on their vocal performances, and...eh. For a Rankin-Bass movie, the vocal performances are a little standard. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some standouts. Orson Bean plays a kind and contemplative Bilbo, and while I don’t know that I like him quite as much as Martin Freeman, I do still like his performance. John Huston is likewise good as Gandalf, although Ian McKellen is...well, Ian McKellen, even in The Hobbit films. And then...there’s Brother Theodore. And, boy oh boy, do I love his Gollum a lot! I think he’s legitimately fantastic as this version of the character, and specifically as this version of the character. Andy Serkis is still the better Gollum, I think, but I do think that Theodore handles Gollum’s last line in this film better than Serkis did. However, I can see Serkis becoming the devious little monster he eventually becomes a lot more.

Also, Hans Conried plays Thorin, and all I could hear was Captain Hook, like, the entire time. There are actually a lot of voice actors from the time period in here, like Don Messick, Paul Frees, and Thurl Ravenscroft, and they’re all fine. There’s also Richard Boone as Smaug, and...he’s OK. Not saying he’s great, but...he’s all right. His deep booming voice does work well for the role, and some of his line deliveries are pretty goddamn solid, but...I dunno, he just doesn’t bring the same gravelly gravitas that I expect of, well, a goddamn dragon, let’s be frank here.

Plot and Writing: 9/10

What can I say? It’s Tolkien! And they’re pretty exact with their adaptation of the original work, as adapted and written by Romeo Muller. And yeah, Muller does a good job...but he also writes this similar to how he wrote all of the other Rank Bass specials. If there’s any problem, it’s that. But even then...I don’t know if I can call that a real problem. Still, I’ll take a point off for it, even though it’s really closer to half a point. If anything, I’m upset that Beorn was completely absent. You coulda worked him in, Romeo!

Directing and Cinematography: 7/10

This is essentially judging the storyboarding, and how shots were positioned in the artistic process. And yeah, it’s...mostly good. Unfortunately, true to form for Rankin-Bass production, it often feels just a little too stiff in places. Makes sense since Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass are the directors. Not as bad as some of their other productions, but still definitely a notable quality of the film. So, points off for that, but the rest of it is honestly fine, especially for animation of the era. What came out from Disney that year?

Oh, damn, the Rescuers? Yeah...shit, yeah, that looked WAY better, and that wasn’t even one of Disney’s best looking film up to that point. Although, different budgets should probably be taken into account. OK, moving on.

Production and Art Design: 8/10

I like the backgrounds in this film a LOT, lemme tell you. They were done by Minoru Nishida, who’s done a hell of a lot of animation stuff, but was also the art director for Kill Bill Vol 1! Neat! But yeah, the backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous here. How about the rest of the art design? Characters were designed by Lester Abrams, then redesigned a bit by the Topcraft guys (specifically  Tsuguyuki Kubo), giving it the very stereotypical Rankin-Bass style that the movie is known for. And does it work? I mean...kinda. The good news is that the different races of Middle Earth are pretty goddamn distinguishable from each other, and creatively designed at that. The bad news...sorry, I never did get used to Smaug, I genuinely don’t like his design in this. Like...why the dog head? By all accounts, Smaug was a stereotypical wyrm-style dragon, with the reptilian features and I. I just...I don’t get it. Sorry, but Jackson’s Smaug wins here, hands down. But that said...I do like Gollum. It’s different, yeah, but I think his design works pretty well. After all, according to Tolkien, we’re not really supposed to know what Gollum is. And I think it works pretty goddamn well!

Music and Editing: 7/10

Glenn Yarbrough. I love ya. I SWEAR, I do actually like you and your main contribution to this movie, The Greatest Adventure. But if I have to hear that song ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME in this movie, I swear...because they chop up the song and use it in EVERY AVAILABLE INSTANCE with Bilbo. And I guess it’s his leitmotif, but they use that song...A LOT. And not instrumentally, I mean with the goddamn lyrics. Just...tone it down a little, OK? But OK, what about the other music, by Maury Laws? I like it! There are some songs in here that are very catchy, and I might actually get “Down, Down, to Goblin Town” on my playlist. Not that it’s all great, but it works for the setting and for the tone of the movie. And what about the editing? Eh. Visual editing is pretty good, bu7t the sound editing is...it’s 1970s animation editing. Hell, even the Rescuers sound editing wasn’t amazing, when I think about it. It’s fine, but it isn’t great most of the time.

Y’know...I think I can gel with a 76% here.

Yeah, I know, it’s low, but that’s because this movie was...good, but OK. I’m not necessarily saying that it was better or worse than the Jackson movies, because I think they compliment each other in some weird ways. I like Thorin as a character more here, but Smaug MUCH more in the Jackson films. While there definitely don’t need to be three Jackson movies...I’ll admit that I think this one is too short, coming in at only an hour and 18 minutes. And I gotta say, I love the fact that it’s animated...but the live-action films also look fantastic, I can never fault them for how they look (except for Dain...ugh). I think they’re similar, but different, at least for me.

But OK, here’s a question: is it just because it’s a property that I really like, and I have my own internal vision of it, which might be influenced by the live-action films? Entirely a possibility. Watch this movie yourself, make your own score! See what you think. Meanwhile, I’m going to try an experiment.

Fantasy movie, same production company, same directors, same animators, also based off of a fantasy book. And, uh...I dunno, a unicorn, maybe?

March 2, 2021: The Last Unicorn (1982)

[lime1991]

Nessa is NOT oversexualized.

You know, in fact, Nessa is not sexualized at ALL. I am so tired of seeing this:

(credit: gghero)

(credit: ilyvbs)

(credit: joxterlesbian)

I will preface this by saying: I am black. I am female. if you tell others “listen to black/female voices on the matter” then here one is. here is a black female voice. listen to me.

The thing most people say is that Nessa’s outfit is too revealing. Well, my question is, why isn’t Misty’s? Or Jessie’s? I mean, there’s even more examples, like Shauna from Hoenn, or Gardenia. What about Shelly’s original design from the R/S games?

Let’s start with Misty,

We are now finished with Misty.

And, well, I shouldn’t have to bring up Jessie, but I will anyway.

Woah! Do you see that? Her top is- is so TIGHT! and her skirt? Oh jeez, and her BOOTS? She’s practically a hooker! this isn’t safe for kids! That was all sarcasm. This is how you sound when you bring up this double standard for Nessa. You know what, let’s just take a look at Nessa vs Jessie right now.

Alright so we see that their tops are... basically the same thing, except for the fact that one is a shirt and the other is, you know, a bikini. for swimming. because she is the water type gym leader. Oh but let’s not forget that she’s showing oh so much SKIN! It’s about the same as Jessie give or take some inches due to the angle of Jessie’s picture vs Nessa’s.

And as I will likely say many more times in this post, Nessa’s top covers her thiddies because she is wearing a bikini. thats what bikinis do. they cover the bare minimum of your body in order for you to legally be in public while also enjoying the water. Should also point out that she’s wearing swimming shorts, so in a way, she’s more covered up than most people who wear bikinis, Misty included.

Finally, for this section of the argument, Shauna, Shelly, and Garden Girl.

Shauna (or Tessa, or whatever), from Hoenn, looks like this:

Pretty revealing clothing, huh? Well what if I told you, this ALSO is not oversexualized? This is an outfit used for the ease of fighting. She is a Battle Girl, a character with no real personality within games, but is an actual character within the anime. Minor, but a character nonetheless.

Now just take a good look at her outfit. Dang, it’s kinda familiar, isn’t it? Oh yeah, that’s because it’s the exact same outfit Nessa wears.

I shouldn’t have to go deeper into this, but I will for just a second.

Garden Girl (Gardenia) she wears a weak ass poncho over her shirt that, even though it’s long sleeved, is not at all a SHIRT. you can see exactly where it ends and, would you look at THAT!

It’s the SAME PLACE!!!! WHOA!!!!!! THIS IS SO WILD MY GUYS!!!!

BUT I’M NOT DONE YET, BECAUSE THERE’S A WHOLE NEXT SECTION AFTER THIS ONE, SO JUST HOLD ON TIGHT FELLAS!

She’s a little small, not my fault she’s from Ruby and Sapphire. This is Shelly. No, not that ORAS Shelly. This is the original R/S Shelly. and she’s well- she’s just-- WEARING NOTHING! you see cleavage in a KID’S game! This is just baffling, fellas!

Now I’m just as tired talking about other scantily clad anime girls as you are, so why not move onto our second section.

“Nintendo is always sexualizing their darkskin/black characters!!!!”

Sooooo sexualized! Oh, you didn’t mean JUST pokemon characters? Well this has no fucking reason to even be considered an argument when we’re talking strictly about pokemon, but ok. I’ll address it.

THE MALE AND FEMALE OCTOLINGS ARE DRESSED THE SAME! THE GIRL IS WEARING A SKIRT BECAUSE SHE’S FEMININE AND HER HEELS ARE VERY TALL!

ALSO DARK SKIN IS NOT THE ONLY CHOICE, YOU CAN CHANGE THE COLOR OF THE SKIN!!

You people are just choosing to be stupid.

That’s it! I’m going BONKERS! I can’t do this anymore, guys! STOP SAYING BLACK WOMEN NEED TO COVER UP! STOP SETTING A DOUBLE STANDARD FOR DARKSKIN WOMEN IN MEDIA! YOU DO NOT DO THIS FOR ANY OTHER RACE OR CHARACTER OTHER THAN NESSA AND YOU KNOW YOU DONT!

STOP BEING FAKE WOKE! YOU’RE NOT DOING ANY BLACK PERSON OR WOMAN A FAVOR FOR PRETENDING TO CARE ABOUT RACISM/SEXISM! IF ANYTHING, YOU ARE THE RACISTS! IT’S JUST SO FUNNY HOW NOW YOU DECIDE TO COME UP WITH FUN QUIRKY LITTLE REDESIGNS, WHERE THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR MISTY? WHERE WAS IT FOR JESSIE? I DON’T SEE A SINGLE REDESIGN FOR SHAUNA OR SHELLY OR EVEN ORAS SHELLY!

SHUT. UP. ABOUT. NESSA.

YOU DON’T CARE. YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT NESSA OR BLACK WOMEN. YOU CARE ABOUT MAKING YOURSELF FEEL COMFORTABLE BECAUSE BLACK WOMEN WEARING SWIMSUITS TRIGGERS SOMETHING IN YOU TO GO HOG GODDAMN WILD AND SCRIBBLE ON A WETSUIT OR A ONCE PIECE.

YOU AIN’T SLICK. AND YOU AIN’T GETTING AWAY WITH THIS RACISM!

TAKE THIS L, IT’S ON ME.

[popculturebuffet]

The Three Caballeros Ride Again Review!: And Ladies (Ride of the Three Caballeros)

Saludos Amigos! I’m back with yet another comics review! And we’re back on The Ride of the Three Cablleros! Thanks again to WeirdKev27 for commissioning this retrospective. It’s going to get pricey and I greatly appreciate it.  PREVIOUSLY ON RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS 

In short.. a bunch of short segments of varying quality, a very thirsty Donald hitting on ladies, the first appearance of Panchito and some very good music. A fun time was had by all. Along with a LOT OF drugs by the Disney Animators. The film wasn’t a huge success, but out of the 6 package films, it was a fan faviorite alongside the Mr. Toad and Ichabod movie, and thus was rereleased quite a bit, as well as being one of the first of this era to end up on VHS due to it’s cult popularity.  As for Panchito and Jose they’d get plenty of success overseas, with both getting solo series in their respective home countries, Jose himself having just resumed having comics again this year, and being rightfully massive characters. But despite being a hit with fans across the world.. in the US... they were pretty much shoved in the Disney Vault for a few decades. Jose would show up on the Wonderful World of Disney, in it’s various forms, three times after the Three Caballeros while Panchito just vanished aside from reuses of the Three Caballeros footage. Their careers in the US just sorta vanished for a few decades. But as suddenly as they vanished, our boys returned triumphantly. Naturally being the most used out of the duo, Jose would show up for the first time in decades during Mickey Mouseworks, a show full of new late 90′s produced Mickey Mouse shorts, all but two of which would end up being recycled for the much more popular and well loved House of Mouse, which would feature the triumphant return of the Cabs to animation after so long away. We’ll get to that next time, as just a year before the Cabs had already reunited in the pages of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in one of Don Rosa’s best loved tales. The Ride of The Three Caballeros was something Don Rosa had wanted to do since he got the job writing Duck Comics in the first place. As he explained in the back of the complete library edition named after this tale, Uncle Keno isn’t the biggest fan of the Donald Theatrical shorts. Having experienced the Carl Barks comics first, and having built his career around them later, he just wasn’t a fan of the goofier, angrier, less nuanced theatrical short Donald, often feeling like he was an entirely different character from the one he loved. And.. honestly he’s not wrong. Both were built for entirely different kinds of comedy: While both did slapstick, Slapstick, along with standard comedy shenanigans, was the main weapon in Shorts Donald’s comedic arsenal. Barksian Donald, while not immune to slapstick, was more like a well built sitcom character: Multi layered, sympathetic when he needs to be, but still having tons of faults to be exploited for laughs and to play off other characters. As a result while I like Donald in the shorts I do prefer Barks version of him, and the shorts Barks did are usually the best of both worlds, combining Donald’s everyman schtick with his slapstick schtick. Of course later cartoons would pick one or the other or combine both, but I do get his point and at the time he wrote this story the only cartoon show starring Donald was.. Quack Pack.. which I can only imagine his reaction to seeing that train wreck. 

But as you can probably guess there was one exception and it was The Three Caballeros. Don genuinely enjoys the beautiful music and the wonderful chemistry the three have. So after a trip to Mexico gave him the perfect setting and the fire in his belly to finally do it, he finally wrote the story. And since they weren’t Barksian characters and hadn’t had any other apperances in decade, Don also took a dive into their comics. Since Jose was more of a fancifial freeloader in his comics, Don decided to ignore this characterization and go with his own based on the film: A latin playboy and lounge singer. And i’m okay with him doing that, as unlike say with Marvel and DC when they destroy a character, Disney characters are both more fluid continuity wise and his is still rooted in a version of the character, and he’s fully accepting and apologetic that some fans hate him for this. Also for some damn reason they redesigned Jose at some point in his Brazil to look like this:

This is far from the dumbest comic book costume change i’ve seen, but it’s certainly one of the most lame, as his original outfit is dapper, stylish and fits the Brazilian version of him well. And it’s not like you CAN’T update the classic Disney characters with modern appearances. Quack Pack, which has somehow come up twice in this review, did so great with Donald and Daisy, giving them new clothes and a haircut in Daisy’s case but both still look great. Same with Goofy for Goof Troop who just wore a dad sweater and bow tie, which puts him in the small but significant club of “Bow Tie Wearing Characters who have defined my life” with Opus the Penguin and the 11th Doctor. You can update a classic character’s’s appearance without coming off like...

Which given Jose’s outfit there is horrifyingly similar, says something. Anyways, Rosa had more use for Panchito’s stories, which had him as a cowboy protecting small towns with the help of his trusty steed Senor Martinez. Rosa loved both aspects and thus used them here, with Martinez getting a makeover to fit Rosa’s style better. Rosa is also the one to popularize Panchito’s last name, having found it on a scrap of research, not realizing the character’s last name was not at all widespread and thus giving him a canon one that has stuck to this day, and sighing in relief when he finally got conformation from another fan this name was indeed something Disney had used after loosing his research scrap.  So with the two boys characters set, a plot set up and a whole sequence planned we’ll talk about on the way “The Three Caballeros Ride Again!” was born. How good is it? Well join me under the cut and i’ll tell you. 

We open in Mexico, specifically near the Barranca Del Cobre, aka The “Copper Canyon” of the Sierra Madre, a natural land formation simlar to the Grand Canyon that Don Rosa saw during his trip and thought would make a great setting. While larger than the Grand Canyon, Rosa figures in his notes it simply isn’t as popular because it’s more isolated than the Grand Canyon and that, combined with it having trees inside distracting from it’s rugged beauty, makes it much harder to build a tourist industry around. The four are headed to El Divisadero, because this comic is determined to kill me with it’s difficult to spell names apparently, where Huey, Dewey or Louie spouts off for no particular reason about the currently being built Chihuahua El Pacifico Railway. Seriously the boys might as well be the security guard from Wayne’s World in this comic, their role for most of their brief page time is just to set up stuff for later. I mean i’m fine with setting up your setting but there are better ways than just spouting off tons of exposition apropos of nothing. 

Donald has driven the boys here for a Woodchuck Jamboree. I did actually look into Jamborees, as before this it only had ever come up in one of my favorite movies of all time, Moonrise Kingdom, and mentioned occasionally in the Ducktales Reboot. Jamboree was first used for a worldwide scouting Jamboree but has gone on to mean a huge gathering of scouts, with the Boy Scouts of America having one every four years, so odds are it’s just a big yearly or quarter yearly thing for the woodchucks. Still it would be nice to see a big gathering like this in the series, especially since several of our cast are involved in them, including the possible power trio of Huey, Violet and Boyd, and Della and Launchpad could easily be slotted into the plot as seen in this season’s premiere.. as could Dewey and Louie if they really want to since according to Frank their members.. they just aren’t nearly as invested as their brother, and thus  don’t do Woodchuck stuff unless he drags them into it, as seen with “Day of the Only Child” in the series itself. It does make sense: Dewey doesn’t have the survival instinct or patience for camping, and Louie hates effort, the out doors, and doing things for anything but profit. Scouting is all of that.  So the boys have driven all this way for the Mexican Jamboree, as they’ve been carefully raising their tarantula Tara, and the Tarantula Breeding Badge is only given out in Mexico, which is plausible: Different branches of a worldwide organization would have different awards and what not in different countries. And Tarantula’s are also native to mexico so that makes sense.. and I want you to apricate that I’m afraid of spiders, not cartoony ones, for instance, this is adorable. 

Galvantula4Life. But real life ones or realistic looking ones? Yeah no fuck that. So I had to go to the Wikipedia entry and see several horrifying looking sizeable spiders for this one tiny fact. Your welcome. Tara ends up on Donald’s face with the boys assuming Donald is sad to see her go instead of you know FUCKING TERRIFIED A GIANT SPIDER IS ON HIS FACE. This gag does not work.. but probably because as I said i’m afraid of spiders and this is my nightmare, you little sociopaths. 

The boys however worry about what Donald will do for the weekend as they prepare to board the bus to the Jamboree... why it’s meeting in an out of the way town like this I have no idea, but i’d guess plot convince. They realize he has no friends, which Donald shrugs off, and they REALLY shouldn’t say to his face, but ruminate on it once he leaves to do whatever after vaguely talking about friends he had in the past. 

I like this scene even though it annoys me a bit: Ilike it because it does set up how Donald really DOSEN’T have any friends in the comics. It’s part of WHY Rosa was drawn to the Cabs: Their one of the few equal relationships donald’s ever had, people who treat him as a partner, in both sense probably, a friend, a true amigo. As the boys point out Scrooge is a monster to him in the comics, paying him 30 cents an hour which I actually put into an inflation calculator to get an accurate read on how little that was by 2020 standards.. and it’s 3 dollars an hour. Hence why I call him a monster, why that bit hasn’t aged well, and why Rosa REALLY, REALLY should’ve retired it. It dosen’t help reading that knowing Disney largely treated Rosa the same way is cringe inducing at best, if not for any fault of his own. It being cringe inducing for an employer horribly mistreating and underpaying his employees though is his fault, he’s a grown ass man, even in the 90′s this had to be a problem, be better. 

And yes i’m being hard on Don Rosa but just like with the comics thing, I simply expect better from the man given just how much respect I have for the guy. His art is gorgeous, his research is immaculate, his knowledge of old films is wonderful and his love for them so infectious i’m tempted to seek the ones he’s mentioned in notes out. He’s a truly wonderful guy and one of my faviorite comic writers.. but I have to treat him fairly like I do ANY of my idols. Just to prove that, I love Grant Morrison, especially his run on New X-Men, but a lot of it hasn’t aged well including some of the language and the entire subplot with Emma manipulating Scott into having an affair when he wasn’t in the best mental place and she knew that and was acting as his therapist, and treating that as a regular affair REALLY doesn’t play well nor should it have. I love Al Ewing, with all my heart and soul, but his run on Ultimates, while having some great worldbuilding and a spectacular cast, ultimately wasn’t very good after the first arc. Not terrible but not good. John Aliison, of Scary Go Round and Giant Days fame, while impressive has had plenty of stories I just didn’t like for various reasons and will probably get into some day and some parts of his stories haven’t aged well. It’s the hard but necessary part of being a critic: You have to be objective and see all the parts of a creator’s creation, not just the ones you like and call them out when they screw up. To me being a fan isn’t about just blindly loving something, it’s about knowing WHY you love it and being willing to call out faults while still thoroughly enjoying the work. There’s a fine line between being blindly loyal to someone, which has created Zach Snyder's awful cult of personality that I hate so much, and being an overly critical shithead and I hope I’m straddling that line. 

Back on the scene after that filibuster they point out Gladstone, who himself is a monster to me for how he doesn’t lift a finger to help his nephews or cousin, and constnatly flaunts his luck to Donald, and is a bit more than teasing especially since he tried to, you know, steal your house once boys. That’s canon.. that’s a barks story so it’s canon here. You.. You remember that right? He tried to steal your house. And we will be getting to that one next month, just you wait.  Finally the Daisy part that annoys me slightly. The boys being sexist.. was sadly the style at the time this story is set, the 1950′s, and thus plays better for me than it does in Ducktales, as their just little boys and don’t know better. Them assuming Girlfriends aren’t like having friends, while accurate though does bother me a bit, but only because the way this story treats Donald’s relationship is PRETTTTTYYYY bad and this sets that up. But we’ll get to that.  Thankfully this foreshadowing of terrors to come is quickly forgotten as we get a GENUINELY great two panels of Donald lamenting his lack of friends. It just works really well, selling his loneliness and how isolated he truly feels without any, which while I have friends I can relate to as I only really hang out with on regularly. 

This is what I was talking about. While I will point out Rosa’s flaws.. their truly outweighed but his artistic mastery. In just three panels he really has a truly emotional and heartrending scene, and just that one close up among them is all we need to get the true depths of Donald’s loneliness. I can be hard on the guy, but it’s because he’s one of the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be and thus I hold him to a high standard.  But with that we transition to...

Or rather first his boss at the hotel, whose pissed his headliner has skipped out on him again to woo a lady, and while he plans to fire the guy, only isn’t throttling him because he figures one of his “Senorita’s” boyfriends will do that for him. And while I do like Jose as a playboy i’m not really fond of him trying to have sex with someone in a relationship, as it puts both him and the person he’s having an affair with in a really bad light. It does fit the character, I just don’t have to like it. As for this particular Senorita, it turns out her boyfriend is a notorious Bandito and is thankfully out of town. So yes, Jose is essentially acting out Come A Little Bit Closer by Jay and the Americans. 

Naturally just like the song, said Bad Man returns, Alfonso “Gold Hat” Bedoya, a machete wielding baddie who while understandably pissed about another man making time with his girlfriend, is less understandably about to murder Jose. Though unlike the song, Alfonso’s Lady, rather than help Jose, encourages her boyfriend to murder him and clearly has a fetish for cheating on her boyfriend with various men and watching as he kills him which.. Jesus. This is why while I don’t LIKE the idea of Jose hitting on women in a relationship it does work here, as he’s still not nearly as bad as either of these two, so it evens out. Jose escapes with his umbrella but crashes.. right into the back of Donald’s car. Rosa, Alfonso’s lady, encourages him to murder both of them for funsies, and being a brutal thug, Alfonso obliges and shoots at the car. And since, to quote the duck himself, Donald doesn’t like being killed “Even a little”, he books it out of there. 

Alfonso doesn’t peruse them though. He’s on the trail of a treasure hunter who has a map to the lost town of Tayopa, which contains untold silver, but before he can do that he has important buisness to get to. 

I fucking love that gag and that Rosa snuck more adult gags in there knowing plenty of Duck Fans, such as myself, are grown men, women and others who can handle this sort of thing, while still slippnig it past the kids. 

Donald, once the fear’s worn off a bit, starts to wonder WHY he’s running when he’s not the one who pissed off the guy, and ignores Jose’s good point about the fact Alfonso really dosen’t seem like a guy who sees nuance.. until Donald sees a wanted poster for Alphonoso and keeps driving. He eventually gets far enough away to feel safe.. and confront the guy who got him into this mess. 

Now kiss. While sadly, they do not, we do get a lovely warm reunion between old pals. Rosa keeps their past vauge as, correctly, he pointed out in his authors notes that the Cabs movie really had no plot, accurate, so instead just vaguely alluded to Donald having known the two in his pre-daisy and boys past and likely had similar adventures to the movie, but adapted more for Rosa’s barksian universe. Jose explains he often finds himself cash poor and thus hits the road to drum up some money, and Mexico is a great place for that as it has plenty of tourist money. 

Though as Jose talks about their past we get the most uncomfortable running gag of the story. 

While Donald’s paranoia here is played for laughs.. it just.. isn’t all that funny that Donald’s relationship with Daisy in the Rosa canon is apparently sooooo deeply unhealthy that just HEARING about him having a romantic past before him, as Rosa confirmed this was pre-daisy in his notes, causes Donald to panic and worry she actually somehow heard this. It just isn’t funny.. it speaks of MASSIVE relationship issues and some form of domestic abuse on Rosa!Daisy’s part. It’s stuff like this why there’s only a handful of Donsy relationships I like: Her treating him like shit is reduced to a punchline, instead of being used for character growth. It’s also why I’m deeply dreading covering “Legend of the Three Cablleros” at the end of this retrospective. I just don’t like when Disney media treats Daisy expecting too much of Donald or being hyper jealous of him as hilarious and while I take this more as the story not ageing well rather than barks fault, as since then Domestic Abuse against Males has become a more widely known and talked about issue, it still doesn’t’t make it plesant. It just makes this not entirely his fault. Just like it’s not Stan Lee’s fault this panel is both deeply hilarious and uses a now kinda racist term. 

I named an entire youtube channel after that.. we all have our regrets. I also bring it up since currently Harry’s become terrifying villain Kindred... and thus the current big bad of an entire Spider-Man run and the being hopefully bringing one more day into the light and hopefully leading to it’s undoing.. once had a goofy mustache he genuinely referred to a “Fu Manchu Face Fuzz” that for all we know he regrew under the mask. 

Donald fondly remembers the old days of being a badass adventuring team and decides, screw it, let’s go show that Gold Hatted Paloka whose boss.. but being Donald ends up driving them into The Copper Canyon instead. Our heroes end up lost in the canyon and , fitting for Donald get shot at. I can only imagine his thoughts right now. 

Their mysterious attacker threatens them.. before revealing himself to be Panchito, whose glad to see his friends having mistook them for Alfonso. Turns out HE’S the mysterious treasure hunter Alfonoso was after, to no one’s surprise. We get another deeply unfunny “Daisy’s only a thousand miles away gag” as the boys reminisce and get introduced to Panchito’s horse, Senior Martniez. He also tells the boy about his map.. but how he’s hit a snag as the lost town where the silver, from a silver mine.. is now buried under pounds of volcanic rock, a volcano having erupted. This is artistic license as Don Rosa admits there aren’t any known volcano’s in Mexico, but that they also still haven’t found that missing town, so this was his explanation.  All is not lost as Donald’s globetrotting with Scrooge meant he knows his history.. and thus spots an old mission which, at the time, were used by preists as cover for secret mines. Donald naturally bungles his way in and we get the much better running gag of the Cabs thinking Donald did something amazing when he really just wondered into slapstick. They end up down the shaft, with Jose deciding Donald can’t do all the work, and finding a secret entrance under a sanctum sanctorum.. a religious thing I have no idea what it ii s but is clearly where Dr. Strange got the name. Regardless they find some old kegs filled with pure silver. As Panchito puts it: 

And he did ideed. In a nice moment that shows off his character, Panchito has no hesitation for sharing the wealth: He wouldn’t of got this far without his friends, and he wont get the Silver cashed in without their help. He also fires off his guns in celebration.. forgetting their in a cave, a gag I genuinely like. 

After some off screen loading and hoisting, the boys are slowly on their way out of the canyon, with Donald’s Car and Senor Martinez pulling the cart with the silver together. With some downtime the three talk about what they’ll spend the money on. 

About what you’d expect. A big beautiful music venue

For Jose, and a nice ranch to retire at for Panchito. Both despite being wondering souls would love a simple place to call home, in their own personal styles. While they are BIG goals, their also likeable and understandable ones: Jose just wants to stop having to do all these tours and carouse and party and perform at home. Be his own boss, and live his own dreams instead of working for whoever will put up for him. Panchito just wants to retire from being a wondering hero to a peaceful life of farming, an honest reward he well earned. And Donald? 

This is easily one of my faviorite moment’s of Rosa’s, one that really cuts to comic donald’s character: Sure he can be lazy, a trickster, hot tempered, and overconfident.. it’s why we love him.. but at the end of the day he genuinely loves those boys and their his first prority and I can see why the reboot took that trait and made it his defining one. They may annoy and frustrate them and he may pull a switch on them, 50′s after all.. but he loves his boys and knows they’ll do great one day and despite his spendthrift ways when given big money.. their all he can think about. Sure Donald probably has his own personal dreams, but instead of going big and retiring he’d probably just take only a small sliver of that money to open a humble hot dog stand or something, so he could have something of his own to provide them, while still giving most of the money to their college. Scrooge is who we all want to be.. Donald is who we are at our core: Flawed people who just want to do our best. It’s why I love the guy so much.  The boys rest in the small town of El Divisadero, which like the town we started in is a real place, though both are much smaller, even as of 2000 when Rosa made his visit, so he had to embelish slightly. THey stop at a local watering hole only to find Alphonso. While Jose is naturally worried, Gold Hat has moved on to Panchito and wants to know why he’s here. However Donald thinking quickly says he’s part of their nightclub act, and we get a rousing version of the three cablleros, which when reading this I synched up to the song. I won’t put it here, as it’s too big for tumblr and it really works more as a whole, but needless to say, it’s the highlight of the comic. While Rosa did have doubts about putting a musical number in a comic, and it’s often trickey, he makes it work with the energy, vibrance and number of gags, that compensate for the music not being there. There’s tons of great gags, from Donald getting thrown out  window, to the stone faced crowd who only cheers when Alphonso ends the number by whacking the three with one of their own guitars.  Alphonso quickly realizes what’s goin on, finds the silver, and then hyjacks the train. The boys take off after him in the car, as Donald triumphantly states “The Three Cablleros Ride Again!”. The three head after Alphonzo, who finds them when trying to release the other cars to increase speed, and then shoots at them. It seems hopeless... until donald gets launched into the air, into a cactus then back into Alphonzo knocking his guns out in a great bit of slapstick. The Conductor, likely not knowing about the others or not carring, detaches the cars though, so our heroes and villian are now sent rocketing through the world’s most dangerous railway. Which, as you’d probably already figured out, is very real and what inspirited rosa to use this setting and thus indeed wind through dangerous mountainsides and over thin cliffs like a real life Donkey Kong Country level.  Eduardo still has his machete though and easily beats Jose’s umbrella, but some more Donald slapstick and him apologizing to daisy about the senioritis as he wishes her goodbye seriously GET SOME COUPLE’S COUNSELING IF THAT EXISTS IN THE 50′S. It puls his sombrero down over his head, and with jose’s umbrella top landing on it, carries him off where he ends up in a lazy asshole sheirff’s jail for a gag. The boys however continue going back.. and the railway is unfinished at this time in history and while they save the silver, their fucked. But Donald has a plan, running to the back of the cars to get his car, and while it has trouble starting, Panchito throws some chilie’s in the tank to get it moving again.  The boys find the silver.. but when one barrel spills they find out it’s not actual liquid silver.. but quicksilver, which was used for silver refinment. So while i’ts shiny, and toxic so of course Jose sticks his hand in before knowing what it is, it’s worthless. Probably. The boys.. all have a nice laugh over it. I love this moment. Sure the boys lost their dreams.. but like Scrooge, the three belivie theirs always another rainbow. What matters is the journey they had and the reunion that restored their friendship. Donald also muses the boys are smart enough to get their own scholarships anyway, so it’s no big loss.. but he does have to get back to Disvadero as the jamboree ends tonight and Jose agrees as he now needs a job again. The owner balks, understandably since Jose missed a performance to get laid and then disappeared overnight.. but the Hotel Owner is visiting so as long as he can provide a big act he’s good, and while Jose is worried as he already gave them his best, the boys naturally pitch in to be the cablleros once more. After all

So we close on Huey, Dewey and Louie returning, still worrying about donald, when they find him on stage. We then end on a truly heartwarming and great last few panels. 

Final Thoughts: What else can I say? This story is beautifully drawn, as usual for Rosa, well paced, fun and really fleshes the Cabs out from the movie. It has a warm, fun adventurous tone and it’s nice to see Donald in the lead since Rosa usually did Scrooge stories and thus Donald was the justifiably surly sidekick instead of the main man> here he’s in the spotlight and gets to show just what he’s made of, while still being the hilarious mess we all know and love. The story honors the original film well, while forging it’s own path and is beautifully built into history. My only real complaints are the nephews being annoying, Alphonso’s somewhat overwrought accent, and of course the daisy gags.. but it’s all HEAVILY outweighed by one of Rosa’s finest hours and easy enough to ignore. Check this out if you can. It’s a classic for a reason. 

If you liked this review, you can commission your own by messaging me on here or at my discord technicolormuk#655 for five dollars a comic story or animation episode. Whenever the ride resumes next, we’ll coming on down to the house of mouse to see the boys return to the screen. In the meantime keep an eye on this space for regular Ducktales reviews every Monday, including once this run ends as I intend to start playing catchup, loud house reviews whenever, my tom retrospective that’s returning soon, and my retrospective on the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, with chapter 2 of that also coming soon. Until then, there’s always another rainbow. 

[siren-virus]

ok, It's been a long while since I've sent an ask, and though that can be atributed to life being life, that can only go so far and these previeous 3 days I've been lazing around mostly XD So, in order to compensate, here's the asks for Free and SWUP that have entered my brain and I haven't filtered out yet that I'll send you. Answer as you see fit for I might send repeated questions or some that have already been aswered before in another form.

For SWUP, would SWUP (Does she have another name? I can't remember) ever try a work somewhere? She has to get money somehow if she wants to be able to buy food, clothes, a home, and pay for all the medical expences she might have to go through. What other friends would she have other than wine aunt and coffee barista? I remember you said there might be a third one who's not really relevant, but whos father is, and you were still unsure on wether to include them or not. Also, the humans in this Earth, how much do they know about aliens? The Unicorns and Dragons? I imagine that considering the amount of damage they can do when they fight, and considering that apparently their experiments on abducted humans that they leave on Earth for like a month before taking them forever, would make them fairly known, and have something like a world agency looking out for different cases or something, however succesful they actually are.

Now onto Free, Is there any chance that we could get to know of any of the friends that the rag-tag group would make along the way of the travels? Like, there HAS to be someone who they befriend without any shennanigans involved at the very least, or with minimal ammount of them, just as there HAS to be a friend made after a disaster of cataclismic proportions happens that inebitably onvolves the found family. Also, how long was Leo outside on his own before bird friend (forgot his name) found him and started to get them back to the Domes? Considering that they have a long adventure, I imagine that he spent at least a month outside without an idea of any direction he was going, and getting lost along the way because of course he gets lost, before he was found. Would the team find anyone else who was part of the Domes but left of their own volition too? Another traveler similar to Leo, but that doesn't want to return to those places for X or Y reason? Would there be anyone from the Domes that they meet that DIDN'T want to leave the Domes in the first place but got out regardless? This could be for whatever reason, from kidnapping to exhile to attack to the Dome to simply escaping from a bad situation.

oop sorry for taking a bit to get back to you,

youre questions make me realise how under developed my stories are wheeezee so i rlly appreciate your questions!!

SWUP aka Vicky her human alias. or I guess the unicorn is the alias. AH SHIT I DIDNT EVEN THINK OF THAT!! Originally when i made SWUP she was supposed to be in high school. But as i grow I also like my characters to grow with me. Maybe I'll get her a job as one of them gym buddies (it has to be a job that allows for some form of freedom, enough to like be able to do th vigialnte thing- (i forget the name) Medical expenses aren't too bad, I'm basing it off aus medical- which means medicare! Plus she doesn't need the hospital all that often, she can regenerate.

In terms of friends she doesn't have many not because she socially inept (like myself)- she was very popular in highschool, but there isn't many people she can relate to. Her best friend James (pending name) comic book nerd that loves super heroes is all she's got. And some gym bros, but they're just friends at the gym, outside complete strangers. I really do want James to be relevant to the plot and not his dad and daddy issues, but he's a bit hard to squeeze in. Maybe if I sat down to actually do some writing, maybe--- ALAS I am but a creature of laziness, and poor attention span. (im barely focusing on Flee atm and I rlly wanna try developing GECKO again fml)

Humans know little to nothing about aliens (excpet for like the government and so wackos who a really into scifi) So even though SWUP is doing her best to help ppl, she's seen as a horrifying villain that is stage one to an alien invasion. (the scifi wackos play a part in that.) Although most Police officers appreciate the help... most.

Suprisingly no, most humans who were mutated into unicorns almost seem to disappear, SWUP is an exception. Why is that hmmmmmmmm? this is kind of a big moment, if I ever plan to push this idea to the webcomic/animation stage, youll see.

There's not really an official .org agency or anything like that, but some wackos who love space, and an actual scientist or 2. So far they have deducted that unicorns are evil space creatures who prey on humans and consume their flesh to get stronger so they can lay eggs and take over the world. There's not a lot of truth to that. Some parts tho... but which part? At the moment I'm really into mystery- so maybe I'll add some mystery elements, or I'll give it to GECKO. first i gotta redesign Mac, poor lad is not a looker I'l tell you that.

FLEE I barely know their friends either- haven't gone about developing them. HOWEVER. I do have a villain in mind. I remember making him for my illustration class back in uni (sigh uni days...) I dom't have a name, but I have a face. He's a big leader of this village known for killing the hybrid/mutants. He and his crew, a rag-tag gun loving, truck driving, share-a-brain-cell, lot. How they've managed to become successful hunter bunch is unknown.

But one the friends I have developed enough is Bolt, who also comes with their own shennanigans and an old rusty bus. Techincally they don't need it because they're fast as fuck, but it helps to have around incase you get a goliath sand bobbit on your hands.

Tristian is the human, Leo is the bird friend. Actually Trisitian was out on his own for three days, he didn't cover much ground when he finally met Leo either- dumbass didn't bring enough food and water to last. He didn't even have a plan, just wanted to go out. The only reason Leo didn't send his ass running home was because something- or someone- pushed them far. far away. Oh my who could it be?

Tristians kind of a rarity, not many people leave the domes unless it's through underground passageways to other domes. Most people are blissfully unaware of the outside world. Not to say Tristians the only one who escaped, but he's the only one who's survived outside for so long. (dome people don't have any survival skills) The only reason Tristians gotten so far is dumb lucks and a hot headed bird friend.

[thesilkenlair]

(Casey Here!)

As much D&D as I play, you'd imagine I would eventually get around to illustrating some of their most iconic monsters! Which is to say, the ones that I personally find the most iconic. Which is to say, the ones I memorized when I was reading my dad's monster manual at age nine. Purple worm - Sandworms never go out of style. I've seen a lot of rad designs for this bugger over the editions, but I favor the slightly less reptilian older takes for this particular critter. It's kinda basic, but sometimes that's what you want. It's like a shark or a crocodile: Just flat out unchanged across the ages. Hook horror - I've heard it rumored that Gygax used a small Gigan figure to represent this monster. I can't verify that, but it definitely sounds right. Hook horrors are one of the very first things you meet when you play around in the caves, and they kind of remind me of the Father Deep monsters of the Hork Bajir homeworld that way. Mind flayer - Mind flayers! Basically, take all of your Dracula conventions and dip them in a fresh coat of Lovecraft. There's that old "decadent aristocratic upper caste system who literally eats the poor, but still somehow comes across as less evil than the actual real life 1%" setup that will never stop being relevant. Though personally, I see mind flayers as the first alternative for folks who want to play that monster-who-feels-the-urge-to-eat-their-friends-but-refuses-to-do-it shtick but don't want to deal with vampire baggage. You know, the furry option! ... Slimy? Rubbery? Do we have a word for anthro-cephalopods? I'm only a casual furry. Gelatinous cube - I'm not apologizing for giving this one a slot. Froghemoth - So, back when I participated in my very first long-term campaign, I played a druid. You've met Talia before. Naturally, I was chomping at the bit for the day I finally got to turn her into a froghemoth, and celebrated the day my wish was finally granted and she was allowed to chug human-supremacist-cultists like popcorn. Yeah, okay, the froghemoth is one of the classic vore-monsters. But it's a charming design in its own right. Kind of a freaky Hanna Barbara critter, like you'd see Space Ghost fighting. No matter how many artists draw it, they can never shake that inherent goofiness that third edition tried so hard to purge. I would probably cram them somewhere onto Fronterra if I was sure they were public domain. As is, I'm 99% certain that this is what Visser Three turned into when he ate Elfangor. Tarrasque - D&D's original kaiju! Kind of just takes the name and nothing else when it comes to its mythological origins, but I don't mind. The Tarrasque is that endgame "let's test the players" final boss monster... Or at least it's supposed to be. My DM reskinned it for our final Pathfinder session, and one of the PCs still nearly killed it in a single turn. Also, he let Talia turn into one, so maybe Pathfinder is just bullshit? Regardless, the Tarrasque has one of those simple, iconic designs. I've heard rumors it was based on the concept art for Fallout's deathclaws, and like the Gigan-figure, I can't verify this in any way. With its reptilian features, twin horns, spiny carapace and grabby fingies, it has an undeniable lizardlike quality that I can't help but find charming. Kinda feels like a more refined version of Zilla? Though for an insatiable eating machine, I notice a lot of artists give it very little belly to work with. Come on, this guy eats entire cities! Give him somewhere to put it! Rust monster - An icon of icons, the rust monster! Drawing its origin from a bizarre Chinese "dinosaur" toy, later designs have made it more insectoid in appearance, but never feeling QUITE like anything Earthly. It's the four limbs. Between the four limbs and the tail, it's hard to tell if it's an arthropod mimicking a vertebrate or the other way around. I'm pretty sure this is part of what inspired my ossaderm creatures for Fronterra. Also, Ryla can turn into one in our campaign. I have no shortage of havoc to wreak when the opportunity comes. Behir - Dragons in D&D are kind of... extra. Godlike beings, paragons of whatever personality trait they represent. Whenever there's something uber powerful in D&D, it gets compared to dragons. It makes them kind of unapproachable. Behirs provide all the essentials of a dragon - Serpentine body, scaly skin, horns, sapience, breath weapon, taste for human flesh - wrapped up in a smaller, weirder, IMO cooler package. You know, your Lambton Worms. A lot easier to port in and out of adventures, a lot less of an event when they show up, but still a formidable force in their own right. I like the behir. The behir knows how to taunt me just the right amount. Bulette - Another Chinese "dinosaur" figure monster, the bulette is actually another one I associate with Talia. Whenever we faced a problem that didn't have a glaringly and immediately obvious solution, she would turn into a bulette, whether it was for beating up robots, digging through obstacles, trampling smurfs, navigating labyrinths, distracting slashers with cute dog tricks... it was kind of her signature form. But shenanigans aside, the bulette is just an excellent monster. While the "land shark" shtick may be common, there's a lot more going on with the bulette's design. It's rumored to be a mad wizard's creation, as he combined a snapping turtle with an armadillo and mixed in a helping of demon blood to taste. Personally, I always considered that to be a neat little rumor to flesh out the world, but never assumed it to be true. The bulette just feels too naturalistic for that. Like some kind of protomammal or crocodylomorph, or weird triassic monstrosity. Magic and demons and dragons and so on DO affect the ecosystem. I always figured the bulette was just something that evolved to compete in this new biosphere. Owlbear - This one, on the other hand, I fully believe the "mad wizard was bored" explanation. Another chinasaur critter, the owlbear is frequently made fun of. What makes it scarier than a regular bear? It can't fly, so why have owl parts at all? Why trade fangs for a beak in what is at best a latural move? Well, first of all, fuck you, owls are creepy motherfuckers, and that alone is enough to justify it. But secondly, that's part of its charm. Besides some improved vision, the owl DOESN'T make it more dangerous. What makes the owlbear dangerous is that it's an insane, Frankensteinian monstrosity roaming uncontrolled through the wilderness! It doesn't need weaponry, its sheer temperament is enough to make it a worthy opponent. Sure, the practical threat might not be hugely above that of a bear, but storytelling isn't about numbers. Any asshole can go outside and get eaten by a bear. The owlbear is part of this world. The owlbear is a reminder of what magic can do. Someone somewhere actually made this thing, for whatever reason, and now the world is irrevocably changed because of it. Owlbears go beyond practicality. They bring the lore! Also, bears don't have very good eyesight, so the big owl eyes probably make them better hunters. Flumph - Is that a Japanese-style martian? Do we just have aliens in D&D? Dear lord, I love them! Okay, the flumph has got a sizable hatedom. And that hatedom can eat my ass, because the flumph is precious and perfect just the way it is! Flumphs are designed as a sort of sidekick-type creature. They're not very good fighters, but they bring knowledge and lore to the table. Whether they're aliens from some far off star, seeking your aid to prevent catastrophe, or psionic natives of the Underdark eager to bask in your positivity and hopefully stick it to the tyrants they're forced to share real estate with. My group generally treats them as straight up aliens, benevolent but strange. Course, we're all pretty strange, so we get along just fine. Otyugh - Okay so, the aberration creature type implies that this is something from another world that doesn't belong. And yet otyughs, which are aberrations, are an essential part of this world's ecosystem? Okay, I can buy the idea that an alien organism adapted to our world and is now a key part of it. Fronterra's got a TON of that. It just feels like after a point, the otyugh would be considered a beast? Otyughs are great. Every ecosystem needs a decomposer, and every fantasy story needs at least one dive into the sewers. Otyughs provide both, and are intelligent enough to keep the plot moving if it hits a snag. There's always going to be garbage, refuse, carrion, decay, things that need to be broken down and processed. Carrion crawler - The carrion crawler is pretty similar to the otyugh in that it's technically not considered a beast, and therefor must have its origins elsewhere, but feels so integrated into the ecosystem that it just feels like it belongs. They usually can't talk, so they're not just reskinned otyughs, but I still consider them pretty essential. Otyughs find a singular spot where waste is dumped and shovel it down at their leisure, while carrion crawlers skulk through the tunnels, actively seeking their food. The crawler got one of the most radical redesigns on the transition from second to third edition, but I can't really choose a single favorite. The oldschool tentacle-faced cutworm looks like it could be a real animal, while the googly-eyed Halloween decoration feels like it could be from another world, merely having set up shop here. Could there name apply to two wholly different creatures? If so, then I'm not sure which one mine would be considered. I kinda mashed them together into something that doesn't quite feel like either. But I like it for what it is. Maybe I'll sneak it onto Fronterra. Aboleth - Tentacled, telepathic sea creatures who turn humans into slimy minions, who remember everything their race has ever seen, and who are always plotting something behind the scenes. Yeah, the aboleths really crank up the Lovecraft elements. Actually, between the mind flayers, the flumphs and the aboleths, even the most oldschool D&D covered quite a few essential Lovecraftian bases. The flayers are your corrupt yet still recognizable humanoids who can be considered truly evil, the flumphs are benevolent-yet-bizarre guardians who know more than you, and the aboleths are the truly unknowable, sinister intellects. The fact that they can barely function on land honestly only adds to that, IMO. They're inherently difficult for a party to reach, and they offer some nice underwater adventure seeds. Not enough adventures go underwater. There's this perception that the ocean is bad for storytelling because so many writers lack the creativity to make it work. I wanna run an underwater adventure now. Beholder - Icon of icons! THE D&D monster! The beholder! Paranoid, jumpy, always five steps ahead and twenty steps perpendicular! Beholds are fun in just about every way. Between their wacky, diverse designs, their elaborate lairs, their eccentric personalities, their bizarre powers, you're never gonna run out of fun with beholders. Remorhaz - It's always been a thing that bothered me with environment-based monsters. Why does the ice monster who lives in the cold use ice as a weapon? Aren't most of the things it encounters going to be resistant to the cold? Sure, a cone of cold will still kill a polar bear, but a lot of the monsters in the tundra are outright immune to cold. A while dragon's not going to get much use out of its breath weapon fighting frost worms and frost giants. That's one reason the remorhaz sticks out to be. We have an icy tundra beast whose insides are a scorching furnace, which it can intensify and weaponize as it sees fit. Which also conveniently explains why its design - a sort of cobra-esque centipede - invokes warm-weather creatures, despite its icy environment. It's a nice subversion of the usual tropes, plus it's just a memorable, cool looking critter to begin with. On a smaller note, the remorhaz feels like a good loophole for Ryla's "no cold weather morphs" rule. Turning into something elementally affiliated with ice is no good, but a non-magical monster that survives the cold by superheating its insides? That seems perfectly viable to me!

[vanherst]

Vher98 Update 5

I know it's only been a couple of weeks since the last blog post about my recent updates towards developing Vher98, but trust me it's for a good reason, I'll split it up into chapters to sorta give a bit more of an explination towards developments and get a bit more in depth about it for once.

Display properties.

This has been delayed for SO long, and finally I've gotten around to doing it. Finishing the display properties menu. The display properties has been the bane of my existance about this website but yet my best feature, just from the schemes feature alone. But this week I have a new addition, and that is to say I now have desktop icon schemes! Inwhich, allows you to change the desktop icons based on preselected spritesheets (Which you can also change by the command prompt!).

At the moment there are 6 presetswhich you can select, I recently did a massive sprite redesign for desktop icons based on my new character, Petra! But that's for a future update, for now I've set the default spritesheet and included all of the old ones, which you can select from, alongside being able preview them at a smaller resolution to be compatiable with the display properties window.

I've also added a few other settings which you can see previews of, not all of which are programmed yet, so at a future date I'll either change them around or program them. But for now, I've added the ability to change desktop icon sizes to a more native modern scale, but leaving the default setting as the classic windows 98 recreation.

I've also added additional wallpapers, only accessable through the effects tab and "CSGO MODE" which was featured in the background of the preview blog post, which recreates the settings for my counterstrike mainmenu, along with adjusting the desktop icons and wallpaper to fit.

As previewed above, designed to be a slight nod to my recent "Neon Genesis Evanjollion" video, featured on my youtube channel. I've recorded and animated my counterstrike character with loopable animations which play continuously in the background.

Now, I know this is a lot of text for what seemingly is a minor update, but the main reason I was able to design the latest additions to the effects tab was because of the recent massive rewrite I've had to do in order to fix a bunch of problems I was coming across, one of which being how unoptimised themes were reletively.

Left: new code which include schemes selection and the new effects menu toggles. Right: old code, only including schemes selection.

This entire re-write revolves around basically storing arrays of data rather than manually switching values of variables, along with tons of adjustments to unneeded variables and how theme data is required to be stored, as CSMODE needs to store the theme data to be able to toggle from the data needed to switch from the current scheme to CSGO mode.

I cannot understate howmuch of a rewrite this is, and as much as I would like to say "I really don't get why I ever did it otherwise", I would be lying. But this is a super incredable optimisation and looking at this comparritively makes me super pleased with how far i've come from knowing nothing about HTML/JS to this. Jquery is a godsend.

Start Menu

On my newly found optimisation craze, I've also done tons of rewriting to the startmenu, another long overdue reform. Even though I've recently done a rewrite on this thing, I knew there was still tons of improvements with my new knowledge of jquery.

Top image: old code in Javascript Bottom image: new code in Jquery

I've also put aside a few hours of time to dedicate creating new assets for the start menu. It became REALLY hard to find a nice and consistant style which windows 98 used, but it was really hard to find sources of any of the original assets but also have the levels of details I knew windows 98 for, especially when tons of the assets from windows 98 came from windows 95, which still relied on 8 bit colour in some instances.

So I did a bunch of digging and found the assets Windows 98 used at the end of it's lifespan and modified them a bunch to put into Vher98, giving my own personal touch and hopefully to keep the art direction of icons a bit more consistant and unique to look at and use.

Task management

Alright, last big one. Task management. Another long overdue reform was needed for this thing. Prior to this month, tasks relied on whatever manual order I decide to create the task and assign a number to, the number will dedicate placement on the taskbar depending on which value was the highest.

So for example, the Display Properties will ALWAYS be the third task on the taskbar if you was to open everything up, simply because I didn't know how to calculate the placement prior to designing tons of assets. Especially when the original conception of the site RELIED on myself manually creating the visual look of the taskbar as the entire site was designed based on images. From windows, taskbar to the starrtmenu. It was awfully inefficent.

Top image: Example of windows being opened from oldest (left) to newest (right). Bottom image: The new optimised and redesigned code for calculating taskbar placement and task assignment.

Anyway, that being said I now have automated calculation for taskbar task placement. If you open a task, it will open and remain in the order of the task being ordered. Writing this makes me have a smug little grin on my face just from how happy I am I was even able to get this to work properly, and it's only a few lines of math to even get the result I have.

Conclusion

There's tons of other stuff I wish to go on about, but that's why I have patchnotes. if you wish to read them, you can check them out on my github, or in the Startmenu of Vher98.

There's a few bugs I need to get around to fixing, but I've invested a few hundred hours into this thing over the past month alone and I really should take a break to get onto other projects I wish to get around to completing.

I recently started developing a mod for Terraria and some drawings I want to get around to finishing sooner or later. But, the most important thing I REALLY need to get around to is branding. Over the past month or two I've been growing more and more displeased with how I present myself and the fact I have stagnated a bit within the realms of my carear and I need to get around to sorting these personal matters sooner rather than later.

I'll be back with a couple of projects. It might take a while but I promise it's for a good cause.