#when i first designed them i made them raptorial

[hordemama]

sorry ive been gone! school, boxing, and a few other things have taken my time and i havent drawn very much. found the FIRST space rabbit drawings!!! made these in the break room at work one day. i miss that original thick, wide-eyed head and havent been able to replicate that style again 😔 anyway!

[iamthekaijuking]

The reveal of primal malzeno as sunbreak’s final boss ended up postponing the malzeno vid, so UHC will be waiting till the last title update to continue working on it.

Instead we got a seltas vid, and while I didn’t have a part in this one since I’m mostly the phylogenetics and anatomy guy, @krmoaten-blog made art for the video so go give her a follow. And also I prompted an interesting conversation between my fellow poopenshitters about the pincers on seltas queen.

Seltas are obviously meant to be rhinoceros beetles since Capcom modeled the male’s anatomy as closely to Dynastinae as they could with 3DS graphics (and rhinoceros beetles are kinda big in Japan so it was only a matter of time till we got a monster of one), and they even gave him an aedeagus! The insect equivalent of a penis. The mantid-like claws aren’t really indicative of evolutionary relation since raptorial appendages are a pretty easy thing to evolve in arthropods.

The queens are pretty odd though and are almost larviform in anatomy. And while she also matches up with beetle anatomy pretty well, her pincers threw me for a loop since beetles don’t have abdomen pincers. At first I thought they were derived from parts of the vagina but after bugging @revretch about it it seems that there isn’t a part of the vagina that can be modified into pincers. So the theory I came up with and shared is that it’s a modified forked aedeagus.

My theory is that seltas queens don’t face too much pressure to retain normal reproductive systems since they’re making 100% of the decisions when it comes to reproduction, and eventually became intersex like moles but with weird aedeaguses. Eventually they evolved to actually put those aedeaguses to use by giving them joints to hold onto mates during reproduction and it just kinda went from there.

So tldr, there are no female seltas. Only males and hulking cannibalistic “queens”.

As far as my thoughts on them go I think they’re amazing and seltas is definitely the best beginner monster. I also love their designs and seltas queen is a giant arthropod done right, with her massive columnar legs that don’t end in points. Whenever I design giant arthropods I actually reference her.

Follow my poopenshitter friends who have tumblrs! @dappercritter, @lizard-legendarium, Krmoaten, @astralarchilocus, @glavenychus

[thenamesblurrito]

here's some Aventuri mecha! they also happen to be the first TFOCs i ever made but this is my favorite iteration of them. only time i've ever managed to give them a design i like. Mantis, Quetzal, and Seraph are a sibling trine from Jubilee, capital of Divinex, menial laborers under jurisdiction of the High Court. each of them have calcite inclusions (that's the patterning on their armor there), which is a less common but mundane mineral. they're on the petite side for Aventuri frames, so you aren't going to see mecha much thinner, lighter, or more delicate than this

Mantis is a loadbearer, which in Divinex means she's consigned to a form of state-run indentured servitude. since her sister is a cityspeaker, Mantis often works with her as a member of the construction and repair teams in Triumpha's underbelly. she has no other outlier power (beyond typical Aventuri extremophilia), but her surprising strength and durability are formidable enough. despite this, she is very meek, often simply trying to make herself small and unnoticed, deferring to others, remaining quiet and speaking only when spoken to. in a self-fulfilling mixture of nature and nurture, Divinexi culture has successfully convinced her that since she enjoys manual labor well enough and isn't confrontational at spark to speak out against anyone bossing her around or snubbing her for being a loadbearer, she clearly must be suited for and destined to never rise above this station, a civil servant to the end. she tries not to dwell on the grim daydreams of stealing someone's corpse and identity and running away to be someone else, a bloody, wistful fantasy for many loadbearers

Quetzal doesn't have a special sparktype or notably rare abilities. her outlier power is hard-light projections, from illusions to forcefields to flashbangs. her bright colors and brighter powers fit her personality very well, as she is the cheeriest and most optimistic of her sisters, more outgoing than the other two combined. but she's tired. more often than she'd like to admit, her smile is forced and her upbeat tone is false. it's hard not to be worn down when she, as the "normal" one in her trine, is responsible for negotiating her family's indenturement. the contract of civil servanthood for Mantis and Seraph could be overseen by someone else, but Quetzal stepped in to be their handler instead in the hopes that she could at least stick up for the two of them in a demanding society. her own job is as a personnel coordinator for many repair and maintenance teams beneath Jubilee, fitting for a people person like her, but trying to make sure everyone is treated well without favoring her own siblings unfairly is an emotional drain that is slowly killing her cheer

Seraph is a cityspeaker, and a damn good one too. she hid her aptitude for awhile, pretending that the hard-light projection outlier power she shares with Quetzal was her only ability, but it didn't last. now she uses that hard-light to display maps and diagrams of Triumpha's internals directly to repair crews, highlighting the areas the Titan feels worst and projecting maintenance plans for everyone to follow along. unlike her sisters, she is not resigned to her lot, but isn't rebellious about it. she is sullen, quiet, and bitter, preferring the company of half-lucid Triumpha to any others, sometimes even her family. she's hardly about to start a revolution, and doesn't even complain to her Titan or her fellow cityspeakers, but everyone definitely feels her cold shoulder on a good day, and heated, biting sarcasm on a bad one. her life will get better. her life will get better, not out of dutiful obedience like Mantis or strained optimism like Quetzal, but out of stubborn spite

here's sort of a rough example of their alt mode. they can transform their raptorial wing-arms to rotors in root mode, not unlike ES Twitch

[gryphsdeadbones]

i am looking at ur oc so intently ,, whats ur ocs story if you have one for him? :D hes VERY neat

SWEATS AS IVE WRITTEN A COUPLE OF OLD GOOGLE DOCS WORTH OF INFO im too shy to share again-

BASICALLY shades was originally an oc from a game but he kinda turned into his own thing ! i’ve done a LOT of work and writing for many RPs involving him dkfjdfgkj

his design is based on my sona before he evolved on his own- id link the old stuff but i always keep revamping it dGJDLGFDG the ‘short’ version is

shades is a gryphon! there used to be many like him in a medieval-like kingdom. the usual sort of fairy tale stuff

(^old story book art where i never finished the other pages)

he used to be a knight. the princess’ own bodyguard. they were best friends. all was well in the kingdom

and then things gradually got worse. magical creatures like him kept disappearing left and right til it was just him left

eventually he got framed for a coup / attempted regicide

you know the drill. what they sentence ‘traitors’ like him

the moment he was supposed to bite the dust, something happened.

he became sort of a cautionary myth from then on. for all everyone knows, the kingdom straight up got wiped off the map overnight

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> fast forward to god knows how long

its the modern era now (it makes sense with his original source i promise GFLDNGDLFJNG)

he gets a job as a bodyguard / security guard

^VERY old ref. height is anywhere from 6′2″ to 6′9″ to Even Bigger. its like fighting a lion AND raptorial bird

he’s pretty good at it! the security stuff! he does get hurt sometimes, but he can heal.

he can’t quite remember the past and frankly, he doesn’t want to. it does become relevant when his powers go out of wack 

^shades with no mask.

ive made like so many changes but basically the mask sorta helps keep himself in check. it doesnt come off easily after the whole first death thing

very heavily associated with the sun, despite his dark fur!

...........................i probably sound like a lunatic GDFLJGNDFLJGN this got long

basically even shorter version:

medieval fantasy gryphon with a lot of trauma becomes big softy bodyguard. he gives really good hugs. his main abilities are healing but hes also a crazy fuckin tank when need be

BONUS:

this was his original version- 2 different characters til i decided to just merge them 

BONUS 2: 

before i even knew of specific characters, in some aus he loses his left eye and/or left arm. if i give him an eyepatch its because of those aus and not certain existing characters i swear

BONUS 3:

people really really really want hugs from him 

[scope-dogg]

Cross Ange: Skeev Score Roundup and Final Thoughts

Before I go in to the verdict, let’s finish up the tally of this show’s fanservice. This series is notorious for this so I set out to try and catalogue it with some kind of objective scale. As a reminder, every time there was a boob shot, butt shot or otherwise fan-servicey camera angle, I gave the episode 1 point. Note that this was specifically for shots where the character’s anatomy is the focal point of the shot, or shots with more than the average amount of nudity (If I counted every shot with a character wearing skimpy clothes and you can see their boobs or butt then each episode would likely earn hundreds of points more than I gave it) When a scenario arose with obvious sexual connotations I gave it 1-10 points, with a more overtly sexual or degrading incident earning more points. For instance, two characters kissing is usually 1-3 points, whereas a sexual assault is 10 points. With that in mind, the Skeev score for each episode is as follows, below the break:

E01 - 27 E02 - 42 E03 - 15 E04 - 28 E05 - 47 E06 - 12 E07 - 19 E08 - 18 E09 - 1 E10 - 23 E11 - 28 E12 - 11 E13 - 5 E14 - 13 E15 - 27 E16 - 26 E17 - 25 E18 - 11 E19 - 32 E20 - 43 E21 - 8 E22 - 18 E23 - 21 E24 - 11 E25 - 40

Add those scores altogether and divide by 25 episodes and we get our average:

Cross Ange Skeev Index Average Score: 22.4

Before I go on, let’s just address this. The amount of fanservice I thought, overall, on average, wasn’t that excessive, probably in line with various other fanservicey anime. The next most fanservicey mecha series I’ve seen was probably Shinkon Gattai Godannar, and that’s honestly not too far behind this. However, the sexual content in this spikes up and down a lot, where sometimes it feels like they’re trying to tone it down and then other times it’s like they can’t help themselves. The worst scenes are absolutely awful, for some I wish I could give more than ten points, and a couple of these scenes come really early on. A lot of people trying this out are going to see them and instantly recoil from this series, and I honestly can’t say I can blame them. I feel like that’s also the primary source of this series’ notoriety. I’m split between feeling that it’s deserved and that it’s a shame, because I actually found quite a lot to like about this series, but everything I liked comes with caveats. Female main characters in mecha are quite rare - the gold standards are probably the main characters of Gunbuster and Diebuster as well as Patlabor and Escaflowne, but other than that there’s precious little. Enter Ange, who’s cross a lot of the time. I actually thought that she was quite a good, even occasionally great character, who develops a lot over the course of the series and becomes a strong, independent protagonist - so long as the writers and animators aren’t conspiring to put her in some cheap sexual scenario, or worse, in the way of some pretty horrendous sexual abuse. I thought she deserved better treatment than this series’ writers give her, frankly. Her by-and-large female co-cast are also mostly great, as a bunch they’ve got a lot of personality and their conflicts and backgrounds are typically woven quite well into the overarching plot.

That’s probably the next thing to talk about, because it’s another mixed bag. The plot setup is really good: in a world where people can use mana, which is basically magic, the people who can’t are called Norma and are shunned as monsters. Princess Angelise is down with this, until she discovers that she is one. She’s deported to a distant island called Arzenal, where Norma are put to work piloting flying mecha called Para-mail to fight dragons that are invading from another dimension. I think that this setting is great, it’s unique and sets up some interesting questions about the world. The caveat is that when it comes to actually explaining it all, the answers are more convoluted than they need to be. When the series spills the beans it feels like it’s throwing a boulder at your head with the amount of exposition it needs to do, and there’s so much that it kind of pushes it over the barrier from interesting to just overblown and ridiculous. The effect is a series that takes a dip in the second half, and it sometimes gives in to melodrama or nonsensical bullshit - episode 22 is probably my single least favourite episode of any mecha anime ever, as it features a plot asspull that was so bad that calling it an asspull is arguably being too kind to it - that would imply that some kind of effort was made. The second half does have some silver linings though, including a creepy main villain and some plot revelations about familiar characters, but overall it fell short of the promise of the earlier portions.

Probably the one thing I can unequivocally praise is the mechanical designs, which I thought were fantastic. I usually don’t go for mecha with the kind of spindly wing-thrusters on the Vilkiss, which are similar to the Strike Freedom from Gundam Seed, but Vilkiss manages to pull it off, plus it has a sharp yet curvaceous and elegant design that’s almost raptorial in essence - it’s refined and graceful but with more than a hint of viciousness about it, which makes it a perfect fit for its pilot. All the other mecha in the series follow a similar sort of design pattern, which means they’re not as varied as some other series but they’re all still great on their own merits. The one small caveat is that they’re all animated in 3D, which I usually hate, but this is about as well as I’ve seen it done. The fights are all well animated as well, as is the rest of the series for the most part, although there are some obvious cut corners scattered throughout.

Overall, whether to recommend CastlevaniaCross Ange: Rondo of Blood and KnucklesDragons (guest starring DanteKira Yamato from the Devil May CryGundam Seed series!) isn’t as cut and dry as I’d like. For the typical anime viewer, it’d maybe be a hesitant recommendation, so long as this isn’t the first mecha series they’ve seen, because there are plenty out there that are far better. If it’s someone who’s sensitive to the ways women are portrayed in media, then I’d say definitely no - there is some good about this series in that regard, because I feel like Ange is in many ways a strong female lead, but the endless fanservice and sexual content means that the bad strongly outweighs the good. On the other hand, if you’re someone who doesn’t give a fuck, who enjoys their titty anime shamelessly, hell, go right ahead, you sick bastard, you’ll probably like it. On balance I dunno, I feel very neutral on the whole about this series. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting but at the same time wasn’t as good as I might have hoped. At the very least it kept me watching, I don’t usually get through anime of this length this quickly. I feel like it could have been unambiguously good or even great if they’d changed just a few things, like cutting out some of the most uncomfortable scenes and plotting things out just a little more carefully. At the very least, this wasn’t total trash like Robot Girls Z was.

Hopefully I’ll get something that’s unequivacally good on my next spin of the wheel.