#bosswooper

[make-it-mavis]

Hey, long time no talk!

I have a possibly unusual question;

A lot of your fics are posted directly to tumblr - I've never done that before, and I wanted to ask if there was anything to keep in mind or be aware of when doing so.

The fics are already posted to Ao3, so would it make more sense to simply link them once, or is it reasonable to post each chapter here as well?

You're the only person I could think of with experience in the subject, sorry for bothering you!

Hello old chum!

Well, first off something to be aware of is that if I could do it all again, I wouldn't have posted full fics directly on tumblr. Simply because the Read More sometimes just doesn't work and people are text-walled. I think the long-post coding on here is better now but I just feel like it's good manners to be mindful of such things. Little essays are one thing but full several page fics are another.

In recent years I'm a much bigger fan of linking to AO3. Give the fic title along with important info (fandom, word count, characters involved, content warnings, summary, etc.) then include a short text preview to hook the audience. And then insert the link. That's how I like to do it, anyway!

As for posting a chapter at a time, it's a matter of preference, but I usually prefer it over just making one post. It's just more fun to queue the chapters up and watch them gradually pop up. Plus that way you have a better chance of being seen by more people and drawing readers in. Same format as above but with info about the specific chapters and a link to the first chapter as well.

Making a pinned post with links to your different fics is not a bad idea either.

I do wish that I had stuck with AO3 links for Homesick but also the shortest chapter in that was three words long lmao

Good luck and happy writing!

[inprogresspokemon]

Hey, do you have any tips on how to make fakemon that looks like they still belongs in the pokémon universe? Like your lickytung evolution and the dual type eevolutions. I'm having some trouble with my designs.

I'm really sorry I didn't see this ask sooner! Capturing the Pokemon style in my own fakemon is something I feel I'm still working on, but here's some advice I can think of:

There's a simplicity to Pokemon (even the ones with busier designs) that is easy to forget if you're eager to incorporate a lot of ideas. They usually don't have much texture to them. Pokemon like Pikachu and Meowth are furry, but don't have the fur drawn, for example.

Most Pokemon only have four or less colors (plus those colors' highlights and shadows, etc). They usually don't have super saturated/neon colors.

Pokemon use a lot of simple shapes. Most of their lines are smooth and curved. Feet and toes are very simplified.

Proportions are exaggerated and cartoonish, and while it should like that that fakemon could move around properly, it doesn’t need accurate anatomy.

A lot of what makes a design look like an actual Pokemon is often also the style you draw it in. One day I’ll make a proper tutorial, but here are some notes I made about my style.

I wish I had more general advice. If you have any more specific questions, I'll try to give more specific answers! Hope this helps :)

[dood1e-bug]

Are you still doing the drawing memes? How about some out of character ones on the teeth and tears one, with 1C professor and 5B Ripto? (I know there's no numbers on them, but I didn't know how else to specify)

sure

(oh shoot evil professor)

(oh no broken heart)

[devilish-digital-imp]

🌳 (Accidentally Baby Ripto)

Impmonscaled one of the taller trees in the area. It had watched a smallgroup of bird flock to that tree in particular, and it hoped to snaga few for a meal. It got closer to its prey, floating a to keep itsweight of the branches, and readied an ice spell. The imp lobbed itinto the middle of the flock, causing a number of the birds to fallto the ground stunned from the shock of cold. The ones unharmed bythe spell took off in a panic leaving the injured to their fate.

[bills-pokedex]

Now I'm morbidly intrigued - what horror stories regarding brown bouffalant are we speaking of, and has anything been done about it?

Well...

For starters, I’m not even sure if the materials used to make Brown Bouffalant is entirely edible. For one thing, as recently as earlier this month, it was found that they use pidove feathers as filler. To give you an idea of why that’s bad, that would be very much akin to humans eating cardboard ... which, according to one recall, was also used in their dry foods at one point.

Granted, the cardboard was more of an accidental contaminant, which leads us to the next point that is the fact that Brown Bouffalant frequently recalls batches of its product due to contaminants of one sort or another. Last year, an entire line of wet food was recalled due to contamination with heightened levels of miltank hormones (which trigger dehydration and frequent urination in some species of canine pokémon), but there were also the three separate occasions in the past five years in which one particular type of food or another was recalled due to contamination with listeria, salmonella, and for reasons I would love to know myself, formaldehyde. Even the foods that pass inspection (somehow) aren’t always safe, as people who feed their products to their pokémon have also reported everything from mold in the bottom of dry food bags to unexplained kidney failure.

That is, of course, during and after production (although it perhaps says something about the way it treats its workers if standards had been set that low). When it comes to sourcing its materials, well, let’s just say that if your food is contaminated with pidove feathers or salmonella, those aren’t signs that your food sources are treated well.

Of course, Brown Bouffalant has been in and out of the courtroom over these incidents for at least a decade, which in turn has led to the stricter regulations you might have heard about when it comes to pokémon food production. Still, even with these regulations in place and even with the government’s reassurance that Brown Bouffalant’s production methods are completely up to both health and sustainability standards, you still hear about Brown Bouffalant in the news far too often for that brand to be worth it.

The main reason why it’s still around, though, is in part due to the fact that, ultimately, they’re the cheapest pokémon food brand on the market. The other part is frankly a complete mystery, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with its parent corporation, Rocket Corp.

[make-it-mavis]

More question! Can, and do Turbo blush? And if he does, does his face turn reddish or a darker shade of grey? And again, if yes, what does it take to fluster him, and how easy is it for Mavis to make him blush?

Turbo’s blood is red, but his grey pigmentation is too opaque for him to have warm human skin tones. When he does blush enough to show (and that’s gotta be some serious blood rush), it darkens the grey, but it has the slightest warm tint to it.

Color does not often show on his face, and when it does, it’s usually just in his ears and indicates that Big Anger is brewing. Anyone who knows him well knows to tread carefully when his ears are flushed. When it comes to Mavis, color on his cheeks usually comes from him foolishly believing he is Immune To Pretty Girl. Like, the alarm and frustration of feeling something too strong and unusual to keep under the Cool Guy Persona control. Which would usually be any kind of romantic feeling that snuck up on him. Maybe she sang a bit too beautifully, maybe she did something so quintessentially her and he got sucker punched by adoration. Maybe she said something that made him feel loved, but in a way far more real than the love from his fans that he desperately chases.

[make-it-mavis]

I may have sent you a rather sleep deprived ask about not being able to come up with any questions. Sorry about that! Anywho, I did come up with a question! You've previously mentioned the not-quite-stellar relationship between T and his brothers, but to what extent does the mutual resentment go? If one of them were in serious trouble/danger, of no fault of their own and not in a way that would be considered "funny", would they stand up for each other, or be content to watch it play out?

(No worries about the other ask, I made a valiant effort to conjure up a reply for it and ended up deciding to find a decent ask meme to reblog. Gonna try to do that today so keep an eye out if you're interested!)

This is a good question. I'm a big fan of "bad/rocky relationship with family member but they'd still run into a burning building for the other" trope, as we can see with Mavis and Felix. But realistically, this is not always the case. Some people are only siblings in the sense that they were born from the same parents, and I think that's kind of true for the Turbo Time brothers. They're coded family, they live in the same game, but they function more like shitty roommates than actual family.

I think in cases like that, oftentimes people will intervene and protect that family member simply because hey, like them or not, there's a person in danger, are you just gonna sit back and let them get hurt? Probably not. But relying on the base-level goodness of these guys' hearts probably won't save many lives. I think that they absolutely could save each other, if the situation was really dire enough, and they were confident that they could do so without dying themselves, but those situations would be very rare. I don't think they would actually risk their hides for each other (the twins would for each other, but they actually behave like brothers).

Funnily enough I think out of them all, Turbo would be the most likely to step in and protect them. Still not very likely, but the most regardless. Turbo has very little close social connections, and in some way he values having sprites that literally can't leave him. They're verbally abusive to each other and hate each other's guts but that's still a form of relationship, and living beings will always need some kind of connection. Even if one doesn't know how to create healthy connections, one will settle for unhealthy, if that's all there is. But the twins on the other hand are capable of making connections outside of Turbo, so losing him would not be such a blow to their social lives.

Of course, this is all barring the obvious "that guy can't die, our game will be unplugged" motivation, which is what it would really come down to.

[make-it-mavis]

I recall that Mavis has hung out with a few sprites aside from Turbo, generally for short periods of time, if memory serves. What about Turbo? Did he have any friends aside from Mavis? (prior to Roadblasters, I mean)

NOPE… nope he sure did not. He had fans and admirers, and sprites he saw regularly (like Tapper) but none of them could truly claim to be Turbo’s friend. He wouldn’t have called them that either.

Turbo’s ideas surrounding love and friendship come largely from the fact that he was kind of “born” into success. He began life on a pedestal above everyone else, and that distanced him from normal social experiences that a non-arcade-champion would have. Almost all of his positive social interactions came in the form of some kind of praise or admiration, so when he’s looking for connection, he’s looking more so for fans than for friends. Even though it doesn’t actually fulfill the need for real love, Turbo doesn’t really have a frame of reference for that. This is of course what leads to the Roadblasters incident. Turbo feels the same innate need for love as anyone, but praise is the only kind of love that makes sense to him, so when the praise is taken away, he feels that rejection a hundred times stronger than anyone else would. And that leads to resentment and desperation.

Mavis is different for him, of course. She’s an extremely lucky find, in his eyes. She’s surprising and confusing and she inspires feelings that no one else does. But she is ultimately just one sprite, and an emotionally stunted one at that, and could not, all on her own, be an entire support network or rewire his perceptions of love. Not before Roadblasters, anyway.

ANYWAY, to answer your question, no, Turbo did not have friends, because he was sure he didn’t need them. And he was an asshole so no one pushed him too hard on that.