This is a Slime Rancher oc art + ask blog run by 2 silly goobers. Currently under construction!
Just a heads up that the subjects here are definitely more mature than the source material and there will be gore/violence/darker themes drawn or mentioned!
masterpost
guide to tags:
#character intro - look here for introductory character bio posts
#slime rancher headcanons - general headcanons about the world of slime rancher; not directly character-related
individual characters tagged like this: "character: (character name)"
started this art about a year ago and planned for it to go with a bigger post about my ideas for angler slimes, but since then a lot of things have changed and will be revised! don't think i'm gonna finish this but it looks nice anyway
They/them. Token human character. Approximate English pronunciation of their name is "john-PUNG".
Their basic lore in the slimeguy storyline:Â
After the main events of the first Slime Rancher, Beatrix decides it's time to move on from the ranch. Motivated partially by a mysterious letter, mostly by wanderlust, she plans to go explore Rainbow Archipelago. Before she leaves, she decides to pass on her old ranch to someone new like Hobson did, and she decides on hosting a raffle so plenty of people can have an opportunity to enter for a chance to buy the property and ticket to The Range. Of course, she doesn't really want someone who isn't passionate to nab the property, so she does have people send in applications (typed out and/or recorded in video messages) to determine who is eligible.
Zhanpeng wins. They say a lot of sappy and cheesy things in the application, but the main thing on their mind is making money. Due to the dangers of ranching on the Range, companies like 7Zee jump at the chance to get fresh meat on the planet, and this is a perfect opportunity to get their name on the list.
They quickly find out that ranching is a LOT harder than expected. Zhanpeng kind of went into getting off-world with the mentality that snagging the property would be the hardest part; once all the paperwork was done and they got there, they'd be able to figure all of the actual ranching logistics out on the way. Easy. Their cockiness ended up backfiring on them, though; Zhanpeng had zero experience in farming, and despite aiming for a career in the production of animal—er… slime—products, they knew jack shit about nature and biology. Due to being a horrible gardener and chicken farmer (all their chickens eventually escaped), they couldn't really even begin to ranch slimes.Â
Staunchly refusing to give up, they'd instead just go out and explore the planet every day, picking up plants and chickens along the way to feed any slimes they came across. This work was waaay more grueling and inefficient than they'd expected. Zhanpeng quickly found out that slimes aren't the cuddly critters they were made out to be on TV; many of them were extremely dangerous, and very, very, hungry. Aw, man! They actually had to break out the Slimepedia and do some reading. Apparently you DO have to know your shit before you try to do anything. It was a bit of a reality check for them.
After a couple of kinda terrifying days of free-for-all, Zhanpeng suddenly got a call on the Range Exchange machine on the ranch. Honestly, they didn't really know who they were expecting, but it definitely wasn't MOCHI MILES, CEO of only the MOST successful interstellar tech company in the galaxy.
Mochi was immediately pretty disappointed upon seeing them. Her entire reason for calling was that Beatrix's ranch had suddenly come online again. In this timeline, Beatrix had disappeared from her ranch to Rainbow Island without much warning, and, during her voyage and first few weeks exploring, she had been too busy to contact her other rancher friends. Mochi, being Mochi, was concerned about her crush business partner and wanted to know what happened to her. Since Zhanpeng was currently her only link to Beatrix, she decided it'd be a good idea to keep them in her back pocket if Beatrix ever contacted Zhanpeng again.
Mochi offered them a job—the same one she'd offered Beatrix not so long ago, mostly because it was very mundane, very easily, and had no chance of putting her empire at risk—feeding quicksilver slimes.
Zhanpeng eagerly accepted, relieved to finally have a predictable source of income (and also somewhat afraid that she would smite them if they said no). Running around with quicksilver slimes gave them a chance to get a little knowledge about slime behavior through osmosis, and occasionally Mochi would exasperatedly point them toward ranching resources if they seemed to be having too much trouble on their exploration adventures (they got—and still do get—injured quite a lot).Â
Some time passed—during which Zhanpeng finally brought slimes to their ranch, though not in any way they expected—before Mochi suddenly received intel on where Beatrix might be: a new, undiscovered archipelago of islands on the Far, Far Range. Unable to up-and-leave her business, Mochi (toooootally legally) sent Zhanpeng to the island, with a boat and the tools for a makeshift ranch setup, with the ultimatum that she would fire them if they said no.
Currently, they are exploring Rainbow Archipelago with their slime pals, trying very hard not to lose their job.
[Image ID: A photo of several ballpoint pen drawings of a slime: a ball with eyes, jagged crystal horns and sharp teeth. The colors used are green and dark blue. In one drawing, the slime is snarling with its mouth wide open. In the other sketches it is simply frowning. / End ID]
this guy is Jack, one of @chickennuggetonastick's slime characters!! he and two of his best slime friends, EXJ and omelet (who will be thrown on my blog eventually) accidentally time-and-universe warped to Earth and ended up meeting... uh... Jay Gatsby from the Great Gatsby. Jack is a huge fan of the guy (even though the other slimes didn't really care much for him) and ever since warping back to the Far, Far Range, he tries to emulate him. this guy and the other slimes were originally made for @swauger's Goku Royale Comics Tournament but we ended having so much fun with them that they're sticking around!!
here are some additional, older drawings of Jack and some doodles of batty slimes and angler slimes (i headcanon that they're related to phosphor slimes which is why they look like insects)
here's the most recent reference sheet i've drawn of my beloved slime rancher character Zhanpeng (展鵬, pronounced kinda like "John-pung" with English sounds). i have made lots of comics with this guy for OCT purposes and definitely plan to make more just for fun.
it's EXJ!!!!!!!!! one of @chickennuggetonastick's slime characters. EXJ was originally made for @presidentgun's Goku Royale Original Character Tournament (entered into a post-elimination bracket in Goku 1, and as our main entry in Goku 2) but currently exists in our funny slime rancher headworld.
more character info under the cut! content warning for uh slime abuse
EXJ was originally a tornado slime held on a ranch by a rancher who only cared about money and clout (which included purchasing Secret Styles) and severely neglected their slimes. All the corrals were super overcrowded and there was usually not enough food to go around, so many of the slimes there were either crystallizing or downright feral. Slimes were forced to fight over food or let the crystals overtake them, not knowing when—if ever—they'd wake up again.
On this ranch, EXJ met Jack, a bubbly, optimistic phosphor slime who was this rancher's favorite because he could provide light during nighttime expeditions. Jack tried to help the other slimes on the ranch as much as he could: sharing his food with the others and showing them how to avoid drawing the rancher's ire. EXJ finally found guidance and a supporter in Jack and tried to protect him as much as was possible from inside a corral. But it wasn't enough.
The rancher would often disappear from the ranch for long stints (the reasons for which were unknown to the slimes, but probably involved plort peddling or resource gathering), and unfortunately one of those trips happened to coincide with a serious drought in the Dry Reef. Crops and chicken populations dwindled out and soon enough, with no rancher to make up for it, the ranch's food shortage was exacerbated.
Determined to save his friends from starvation, Jack forwent food entirely and spent all his energy distributing food to all the corrals. This went on for so long that Jack slowly lost his mobility, and faculties to crystallization.
EXJ, having honed hunger as a tool so EXJ could use crystallized body parts as weapons, had cultivated a row of crystals on the ring orbiting EXJ's body so it could be spun around like a buzzsaw. As EXJ watched Jack crystallize in horror, the tornado slime frantically tried to break out of the corral by slamming the spinning blade into the walls. Eventually, EXJ was able to break out of the corral by damaging the ceiling, but by then, it was too late. Jack had been starving for too long and had gone feral—there was none of the slime EXJ remembered; only desperation and hunger could be seen in Jack's eyes as he lunged to attack.
In a fit of rage and anguish, EXJ flew to each and every corral on the ranch, shattering the ceilings to let all the slimes leap out to freedom. It so turned out that the rancher had chosen this very moment to return; they only had enough time to report the incident to 7Zee before EXJ noticed they were back and shredded them to ribbons.
Looting their vacpack, EXJ was able to scrounge up some fruit, and while the other slimes fled, EXJ brought them to Jack and patiently waited for him to recover. He devoured the food quickly, but when the crystals disappeared, his eyes lit up as if he were meeting EXJ for the first time. He didn't seem to remember anything about his time on the ranch at all—even worse, he had forgotten entirely about human cruelty. When more humans, answering the rancher's distress call, arrived to clean up the mess and redistribute what slimes were left to new owners, Jack was horrified when EXJ jumped forward to attack. The sudden fear in his eyes—fear of EXJ, his friend—shook EXJ enough to cause hesitation, leading the two of them to be captured.
They, along with quantum slime omelet, were shuffled around several ranches through the Range Exchange until finally ending up at Zhanpeng's ranch.
I'm planning on making a comic about that last event at some point,,, but for now... funny ball!!!!
Some drawings and notes on some of my tangle slime headcanons!
Because they live in the desert and contain water, i think most tangle slimes would have some sort of plant growing in them because they're like little oases for plant life (which kind ties into their association with oases in the game, haha!)
I've mentally separated all the slime rancher slimes into loose groups, and i like to think that these guys go in the "bug-like" group with phosphor, honey, angler, flutter and batty slimes, hence their mandibles and six legs.
Tangle slime mouthparts are built mostly to ensnare and pull prey into their mouths whole, rather than to tear it into chunks. As a result, they do not tend to attack humans even though they are carnivores.
my friend @chickennuggetonastick and i are extremely, super duper normal about the slime rancher video games and we have developed a lot of speculative headcanons about the universe!! here are just some of them so far:
SLIME BASICS
Slimes are a taxon of alien lifeforms native to the Far, Far Range. They are generated from the strange slimy substance of the Slime Sea, and new slimes either emerge from the ground via Slime Sea liquid deposits, or they emerge from the sea itself. They're made of a mineral-and-water based sludge and don't yet have a confirmed method of reproduction, though they're very numerous and many species seem to be specialized for specific diets and environments. Speaking of diets, slimes do seek out and metabolize food, but not for the same reasons that Earth animals do—all slimes are actually slowly crystallizing over time, and in order to maintain their goopy state, they have to eat. Metabolizing food items provides the slime energy and the building blocks for their bodies to continue making slime material, but most importantly, the chemical process releases heat, keeping the slime warm and reducing the rate of crystallization.
The crystallization never actually stops, though, so slimes need to eat regularly or they will "petrify" into a solid, dormant state.
Dousing a petrified slime with water will briefly return it to its goopy state and give it a chance to get a bite to eat. (This also can explain why spraying hungry largos in-game delays the time it takes for them to go feral.)
Slimes' bodies also compartmentalize the crystallizing parts of their bodies into large chunks and occasionally expel them; these are plorts, and as all ranchers know, they're useful for humans and can be sold for lots of money.
HOW DO SLIMES EAT?
All slimes need to do to get food into their systems is engulf it (kind of like an amoeba). Many slimes have evolved mouthparts or teeth, but these don't actually aid in the processing of the food; in carnivorous slimes, they're used to keep moving prey like chickens in place for digestion, and many fruit-eating slimes use their mouthparts to remove fruit from trees for ease of engulfing.
Feral slimes are very hungry slimes that have already begun to partially crystallize (this is why all feral slimes have "teeth", even if they did not have them before going feral. The teeth are sharp deposits of crystal). They attack anything in sight even if they're not carnivorous because they're super desperate to keep themselves from going dormant.Â
This loss of rational thinking is what may lead feral slimes to ingest plorts of different types, which transforms them into tarrs.
TARRS
The tarr transformation in a slime completely transforms and mutates the original slime's anatomy. The slime's membrane will no longer be tolerant to water, and dousing a tarr in water or throwing it into the slime sea will dissolve its membrane entirely, leaving behind the slime material of the original slime. This material will, over time, eventually emerge from the ground or the slime sea as a new slime that does not retain any of the memories, experiences, or personality it had before becoming a tarr.
the slime sea is a whole other can of worms that I'll probably get into later but yeah!! i like slimes
The slime sea is a huge reservoir filled a liquid mixture containing the same compound that makes up the bodies of slimes. It likely contains a high percentage of water, since Tarrs dissipate upon contact with it.
Slimes can use the slime sea as a form of fast travel, but because it is made of the same stuff they are, it takes an extreme amount of willpower for them to keep their membrane intact and prevent themselves from dissolving back into the mass. Slimes that have become Tarrs--or those simply cannot resist the pull of the sea anymore--become a part of the sea again and essentially "die." The material of the slime sea is constantly forming into the bodies of new slimes, which are "born" with instincts already intact, and, rarely, strange memories that could only be described as deja vu, or as though they had come from another life.
One theory is that when a slime fades back into the sea, all of its essence (memories, experiences, the being that it was) seep into the sea as well, and that the sea is one vast, living repository of every experience from every slime that has ever lived, and occasionally some more personal parts of a slime essence may be wrapped into new slimes created in the future.
oh! oops, i don't think i mentioned this overtly in the last post, but in our headcanons, slimes are sophonts :))) though humanity does not consider them sentient. this part of the worldbuilding is a bit more wishy-washy because we haven't figured out yet how LANGUAGES and communication work and stuff, but we HAVE thought of some fun slime culture bits.
