#super evolvers

[narmandia]

I wish I knew who designed the Super Evolvers.

Fossil Fighters Champions holds a special place in my heart.

[thycheshirecat]

More Vivos (+ Some Extra Funsies)

Got yet another batch of drawings for y'all, including some new vivosaur ideas that I'm stoked to share with y'all.

First up we have Jinfryx, a Fire attribute vivosaur based on Jinfengopteyx, the Golden Phoenix. A small relative of Troodon that had the ability to fly. This would be a vivosaur with amazing support potential, both giving off high support effects and also having powerful utility moves to give any allies a much needed boost in battle.

And from some of the best support effects to what may end up having the absolute worst we have Saurax, a Neutral attribute based on the maybe allosaurus or maybe its own fellow, Saurophaganax. I wasn't originally going to add this dinosaur to my list because of how many large carnosaurs the game has already, but I recently found out the bones of this guy are actually heavily radioactive, and I couldn't pass up the idea of a radioactive vivosaur now could I! This guy of course would be able to dish out poison and even infection with its skills, and while the vivosaur itself isn't going to give you radiation sickness just by standing next to it (don't want to be letting a real health hazard into a fair fighting tournament now do we), its support effects sure do make allied vivosaurs feel like that's what it's doing.

BONUS

I'm gonna be starting a secondary series where I take selected Super Evolver vivosaurs and give them personal touchups, while still keeping the core concept of the vivosaur alive. Starting with Bulgon and Marple, two chibi vivosaurs who while cute, I personally think could've been made even better with minor adjustments, in Bulgon's case it was just a case of it trimming away anything that made it distinctly feel Tsintao related (i.e. the crest). So I decided to give it a sharp horn in the touchup in order to evoke the same vibes that the crest did, while also still being different enough from Tsintao for Bulgon to feel like an actual upgrade.

Marple on the other had does a fine enough job of looking like a Plesio Super Evolver, but it's hard to see any of the floral patterns due to its solid yellow colouring, and therefor the design looks a lot more bland that it actually is. That being said I could not resist the urge to turn Marple into a marketable plushie so the little guy did end up getting a bit more of a notable change, with pink flowers and added stiches and orange bits to make it pop a bit more.

Will probably at least draw every single Super Evolver even if some of them don't receive touch-ups, there are a couple like T-Rex Lord, Lugmos and Ryden that I honestly think were basically perfect for the animal they represent, but still look pretty fun, if a but dauting to doodle. As for recolour SEs I'm honestly not sure what to do with them but I'll figure something out eventually.

[feminineflavors]

@naughtyapplepie

🍎🥧🧁

[ohposhers]

shitpost based off of something that happened when I was watching my buddy play Chao Island smhhh

[goldensunset]

i’ve been thinking about the pokémon memes where it’s like playing off of that one quote that’s like ‘truly strong trainers should try to win using their favorites’ and it’s like ‘ok well my favorite is [something blatantly overpowered]’ and it’s got me curious. how many people genuinely love pokémon that also happen to be really strong competitively?

so if you will. pick a favorite pokémon (for any reason! whether it’s cuteness or strength or nostalgia etc. no judgment) then go here https://www.smogon.com/dex/sv/pokemon/ and look it up

(you’ll see something that looks like this. see where it says tier and has some gibberish afterwards? don’t worry if you don’t know what that means but tell me what the letters/words are)

also if there are multiple forms and the distinction matters to you make sure you get the right one lol cuz the tiering can be different

edit: forgot to mention i mean specifically in SV! which is what comes up by default. rip every pokémon that either isn’t in SV (it’ll say ‘national dex’) or used to be better but has since fallen off relative to new pokémon

[ineffably-human]

So here's my problem.

And it's not about Nandermo, not exactly anyway. Because I didn't expect Nandermo to become textual until the very end, if at all. The show kept making it clear that they liked their ambiguity to keep the relationship on the razor's edge, and Paul Simms made it clearer and clearer that for some reason (put a pin in this) he just couldn't see their connection as a sexual one.

But I frankly don't care about that, because if anything is canon in this show it's that the vampires will eventually fuck everything, and Nandor canonically fucks his other friends. More importantly, their connection was always the emotional core of both characters. And Paul always did say he saw their relationship as a romance, if a strange and non-sexual one.

So I figured we'd maybe get Nandor confessing that Guillermo meant a lot to him (and immediately walking it back a little), or Guillermo confessing how lost he feels without his vampire dream and Nandor offering him a place. Maybe an ambiguous, could-just-be-queerplatonic-partners 'I love you'. Maybe just the hug they kept teasing for three or four seasons and never got. We got like...half of two of those, in episode 10, so I guess that's a wobbly semi-fulfilled thing by my definition of it.

But it's not the Nandermo of it all. It's the Guillermo of it all. And how this final episode seemed to almost mock Guillermo's place at the emotional core of the show.

And the Guillermo of it all is why we never got the Nandermo of it all.

Shadows has vampires doing absurd-ass things, but every character also has things they want and feel, and there are various amounts of emotional ink spilled about it. The show has found space, sometimes very poignant space, to take that seriously in between the piss and sex jokes. The vampires change very slowly and in spirals, they repeat a lot of their old issues that stem back even to their mortal lives. But they always try.

And things do change in the vampire house; that is not the same household from the first season. Every single character, right down to the Baron and the Guide and Derek, are in different and better places than they were before the show began. They've made progress in their individual desires, and a lot of that is due to the improved connections they have with each other, connections we've watched them foster. A lot of the time it's because they're talked about as a found family, something Guillermo started and Guillermo believed before any of the rest of them did.

---

So where is Guillermo this season? Our human point of view, our dynamic character, the character who has a dream and wants something more than any of the others? Whose dream drives the storyline of the entire show?

Guillermo has chosen to be human, and he thinks he can't be part of the household if he's not a vampire. We watch Guillermo try to throw himself back into the human world trying to make up for lost time - to the point that he forgets the person he called his best friend, the people he called his family, in a way I think we never fully resolve. He thinks he's thriving, and he doesn't even seem upset about leaving the others behind.

We watch him revert (and that's fine, people revert sometimes) to the same waiting lapdog he was when we started the series. We watch him realize that and he says no. Nandor stands up for him, and feels better and more fulfilled in doing so, and that's a great capstone for Nandor and Nandor's own tendency for selfishness. And that's excellent. Episode 10 was a great start for all the ground they had to cover.

Nandor offers for Guillermo to be his partner in crime. His sidekick, but Guillermo expressed that desire back in season one so it's not an insult inherently. But here's the problem. Here's the part of Guillermo that has frankly always been a problem, because I thought it's something the show was eventually going to cover respectfully, and instead it was always part of the joke.

---

Guillermo is someone who made a decision sixteen years ago as part of a very young man's desire, to be respected and have cool powers, to live forever, to see the world. (He somehow thought being a vampire, and only a vampire, could get him those things but that's a rant for another time.)

That young man has grown up. He's in his mid-thirties, he has a body count. We've watched him at various times be empathetic, clever, cunning, and brave. Also extremely sexy in bodyguard gear. (And for some reason, the show keeps wanting us to forget that for a season he was extremely competent and badass and sexy pretty much all the time, and he seemed thrilled to be in that role, and he didn't even care about being a vampire if he could protect Nandor in that way and be regarded as 'part of the team'.)

Then Nandor dresses him in a stupid cowboy costume, and gives him a sidekick name ending in 'Kid', which he seems less than thrilled about. They all still talk about him the entire episode as if he's a disobedient child. The vampires speculate if Guillermo is having a fling with the crew, but no - Guillermo's had one boyfriend, who we saw him hug once and nothing more. Despite living in a house for fifteen years that is openly raunchy and shameless, he seems like a character designed to be both desexed and humiliated, and they never expand on the reason why.

(And if Guillermo were ace it'd be amazing, hell it's my headcanon at this point, but I don't think that's what they're going for. I think the show just desexualizes Guilermo. As a matter of praxis. For some reason.)

And the show has done this more and more to Guillermo in the later seasons. Nandor says he could steal original!Freddie easily from Guillermo if he wanted to. The vampires laugh at the thought of him being a vampire - "a little bat pooping everywhere," and Guillermo's time as a vampire has him basically feeling no different in his sexuality or, after a very brief moment, his confidence. Even Nandor's big climactic moment in Episode 10 has him saying that just because Guillermo isn't as cool or hot or interesting or strong as Jordan (or Nandor) doesn't mean Guillermo deserves to be treated poorly.

Look, I don't know if it's because Harvey Guillen is babyfaced, or because he's fat, or because he carries a different energy to his masculinity. Or because it's great to talk about gay sex and being horny, but writing a gay relationship is just too hard. Or some fun combination of all those things.

But I keep thinking about everyone freaking out when Nandor swooped into the collapsed floorboards to save Guillermo in season 4, and everyone freaked out and swooned. And Paul Simms expressed that as "[Nandor] has to save his little buddy."

Guillermo is a grown-ass man, with a desire to feel powerful and special and accepted, who Nandor sees as his little buddy. (Who everyone in the house sees as their little buddy, and it's nice he's part of the family, but...) After every emotional beat that makes them seem like equals with a special connection, he reverts to the less-cool sidekick who makes Nandor feel special and important. And Guillermo's prior devotion to Nandor - not to vampirism, not to a job or promotion, to Nandor - changes to other things, but Nandor never figures out why that hurts him so much. And for some reason the deepest bond of the series just isn't sexual, the showrunner just can't see it that way, in a house where everyone's fucking but not you Guillermo.

We're at the end of the story, and that's our punchline.

---

And we don't end on one of the points where Guillermo is asserting himself as someone who deserves to be taken seriously, and given the things he wants - and the show has had plenty of those moments, all of which seem to be building and evolving his relationships over the years.

We end on Guillermo being told that suddenly, the documentary is packing up without any fanfare or clarity on what they were looking for in the first place. We get Guillermo stumbling for clarity on what it all meant, what the point was for him and what his life is going to be now. We're told over and over again the documentary (and Guillermo, and the viewers) needs a satisfying capstone, needs emotional closure.

And the vampires tell him to shut up. And they tell him this has all happened before, and none of it is special to them. ("No human is special," Nandor said several episodes ago, and never went back on it.) And they tell him to do a little dance for their amusement, and Colin recites some pithy lines. And every attempt to take a moment to care about Guillermo's journey, or the core of his character and what he needs, is turned into a joke for him and for us.

Guillermo's looking for a point to it all, for some kind of fulfillment, and there wasn't one. And everyone is satisfied in that but him. And even if there were times Guillermo got the chance to be respected, to have cool powers (which he kept, but the vampires keep forgetting them), to live forever (he will die and leave Nandor someday!), to see the world - none of these things are going to come to him now.

It would make absolute, complete, and devastating sense for Guillermo to feel he's outgrown them and to leave. Nandor doesn't even seem upset enough to try and stop him. We never really get a clear reason about why he decides to stay.

I mean, it's for friendship or something, with a line about how they can still be close but he needs 'his own thing'. But in six seasons, over and over and over, we've been driven back to the idea that the most emotional part of this story is Guillermo's desire to become accepted in this family, and the effect he has on Nandor. That Guillermo needs this home and he consistently makes Nandor softer, kinder, less selfish and more fulfilled when they're together.

But those parts of their relationship, the love story parts, don't matter. Guillermo is going to find 'his own thing' when it's been clear how entrenched in this world he is (right down to his DNA), but Nandor will drag him back into shenanigans anyway, probably keeping Guillermo from whatever 'his own thing' is.

And Guillermo will always be Nandor's sidekick, his little buddy, never to be taken seriously. And one day, Guillermo will die, and he'll be someone they all forget. And for some reason, he'll be just fine with that, because he belongs with them but will never really be in a better position.

And he'll be satisfied with that. For some reason. But I won't.

[weaselle]

you know something i love about Terry Pratchett's trolls?

yes they are written very very dumb, for laughs, for instance most trolls can only count as high as "lots" (which is four. Troll counting goes: one, two, many, lots) and we all get a good giggle out of the stupid way they think and talk...

but because of the way he wrote his troll lore, under the right circumstances, trolls are actually far more intelligent than almost anybody else.

And there's something about the way, idk, it's just... i act stupid a lot of the time. Because i get lost in my head and distracted by ten thousand things, and given more than a split second to consider things i'll overthink and second guess my second guesses... but i know that i'm quite smart really.

And there are plenty of people who even more acutely experience some version of being treated like they are dumb while being, in fact, very intelligent if their particular needs are met.

and i just love that these trolls, often the butt of the joke and by far the most comically stupid of Terry Pratchett's fantasy races... when in the circumstances they are made for... turn out to be geniuses. There is something so poetic and cosmically Just, to have that be true. To have them actually be the most intelligent out of everybody if only you put them in the right environment.

[cloudyydraws]

Luigi and Miku (+Mario) doodles

[dezerex]

[claitea]

mushing my two main interests at the moment together

[jesncin]

kampung boy

[seagull-scribbles]

You're out of touch

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[primarinite]

oh yeah i finished the designs for my heroes and partners this morning. was originally gonna upload each of them with my npc redesigns from their respective games but ehhh might as well post them now.

rescue team (team fable): mayar (skitty, she/they) and newlin (mudkip/seadra hybrid, he/him)

explorers (team saviour): asta (eevee/sylveon half evolution, she/it) and dustin (shinx, he/him)

gates to infinity (the eden): nadine (snivy, she/he) and kazuki (oshawott/palafin hybrid, he/him)

super (the vagabonds): zaya (fennekin, she/her) and dalia (treecko, she/her)

[feminineflavors]

🐇🌸🧁

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY ITS THE SURGERY EPISODE BABY!!! ME AND THE HOMIES NEED SOME NEW FACES FOR OUR NEW PLAN, AND WHO BETTER TO GET THE JOB DONE THAN THE TWO MOST EVIL PEOPLE WE'VE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF HAVING OUR LIVES VIOLATED BY? I MEAN IT WOULD BE FUNNY. IT WOULD BE FUNNY.

[pianokantzart]

Do you think that movie Princess Peach was particularly out of character compared to the games? This seems to be a common opinion, but I just don't see it. The more I play games with her either as a playable character or an NPC, game Peach seems to be everything movie Peach is: kind, headstrong, diplomatic but also willing to fight when necessary. People who know more than a cursory glance at Super Mario know that she's not helpless, so I'm not assuming that this is isn't it.

I think what threw most people off was seeing Princes Peach being so fiercely independent.

In many mainstream Mario games Peach's desperation for help is the driving force of the story. Her archetype is to be a gentle, beautiful, pitiable victim of an evil monster. She is reaching out and begging for rescue, and you alone can save her.

Yes, she's quite powerful in her own right and playable in a number of games, but actual character moments in these instances are rare, and definitely not enough to undo decades of her being the poster girl for "damsel in distress." Not to say Peach is pathetic. Her humble kingdom is easily overwhelmed, her soldiers are toddler-sized and squishy, and most of her kidnappings use the element of surprise. She's doing the best she can amidst impossible circumstances, but she's all too aware of how much she needs help.

But the movie doesn't take that route. In the movie she has been warring with Bowser on her own for years, and traveling independently to far-off places to ensure The Mushroom Kingdom doesn't get mixed up in the fight. She is confident in her own abilities, and more protector than protected.

She's not the delicate crown jewel of a vulnerable people, but a mama bear who will come at your throat if you threaten her family. The closest version of Peach I can think of that matches Movie Peach's level of grit and independence is Peach from the Super Mario Adventures comic.

But, unfortunately, those comics are not exactly part of the lexicon of the average, casual Mario enjoyer.

However, I do think this says something about how characters are subject to change depending on the medium. The Mario Movie and the Mario Adventure Comics are both narrative driven, which means that Princess Peach needs to be more than just an end goal the players feels sorry for. What works in games will not always work in a fully fleshed-out story.

With Peach being (at present) the only female in the main cast, keeping her cutesy and vulnerable while ensuring she stays part of the action would be an extremely difficult balancing act. In an isekai-style origin story where Mario is just beginning to learn how to be a hero? Even more so. So they instead make her a mentor figure, guiding Mario through the strange new world he and his brother are lost in. It's different, but it's not a bad different. Peach is still diplomatic, feminine, and empathetic, but her role as a lone royal safeguarding The Mushroom Kingdom makes a touch more sense on paper.

All I ask is that she keep her tea parties and cake baking.