#pso:bb

[the-cult-of-sato]

Happy Birthday to Sonic the Hedgehog from Phantasy Star Online!

[the-cult-of-sato]

I've been doing some side quests for lore, and I'm realizing that the scientists of Pioneer 1 have a recurring pattern of trying to flush their failed experiments and it's cracking me up.

De Rol Le was a worm that the researchers made that could mutate other creatures, then they shoved it down a drain and that's apparently how it ended up in the canal you fight it in.

Olga Flow got shoved into a hole at the bottom of the sea for similar reasons, which is pretty fucking similar to being flushed down the toilet as well...

Considering the Ruins are an old space ship and Dark Falz was sealed inside of it, are we entirely certain that one of Dr Otso's previous incarnations didn't try to flush that thing down the toilet like a dead goldfish, too?!

[the-cult-of-sato]

Some PSO memes I edited and/or redrew earlier this year!

Firstly, the "Do it for Sato" meme, where I tried to fill up all the squares with different pictures of Sato... then VERY QUICKLY ran out of them and had to improvise.

I'm not entirely sure whether the Vivienne, Karen, or Rico pictures are official art or not. The one of Elenor up top isn't, but I can't seem to track down which site it was on (the only thing I remember is that it was in Japanese), but that little red Sato in the center is a t-shirt design that looks to be from -Aye on Redbubble, considering they have other similar designs available.

Then, afterwards, as celebration, I made a Pioneer 2 script captioned version of the "[Sato intensifies]" meme that pops up everywhere, which no joke, led to be making enough goofy small animation edits that I ended up with a cheap 3 month gig helping someone do website graphics.

More below the cut!

Then I started editing together a "Pioneer 2 mentioned!" (With a "No Heals, We Die Like Newmen" hoodie) meme out of that K-on pic... then realized the art wasn't going to mesh together at all, traced the edit for lineart, then figured out that, once I had the lines down, I'd been editing enough to not be half bad at texture and painting, which led to this:

"When you get the Phantasy Star Meme Autism instead of the Good at Math autism."

A total paintover of the same screenshot as above, which I believe came from this gallery, though there's another large dropbox of excellent high-res screenshots posted on Reddit that I'll link just in case.

Then a variation of this meme provided the pose reference for the FOnewearl, though at this point I was still straight-up tracing the area from the fingers to the shoulders, but on the rest of the outfit I started actually trying to sketch things out myself, which led to the Sato version of the hat I use in-game and the Sato to the side mimicking the same pose, but also the knowledge that I was dangerously close to learning how to make art properly...

But also these were all done in GIMP with a mouse, so this picture took like fifteen fucktrillion years, so I decided to animate it and go feed my mags for a while.

[the-cult-of-sato]

All these ARKS members being like "Hear me out..." and posting the most conventionally attractive newearls in tight clothing, but here on Pioneer 2 we know what REAL sex appeal is...

(Also, do you know the sheer power move of throwing this together in like 30 minutes out of a bunch of Visual Novel assets and dropping it like a nuke in a conversation about sex appeal in later PS games? I felt like a fucking wizard. Because I am. From space.)

[the-cult-of-sato]

After like 15 or so years playing PSO off and on on different servers, I've finally achieved two goals: Get a Red Ring

and

EQUIP THAT SHIT AT LEVEL 180 ON MY FONEWEARL KEPLER, YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH BOOOOOOOOOY!

...Next goal, get a fucking Psycho Wand.

[the-cult-of-sato]

Rapidly approaching the end of PSO Episode IV and my research of L O R E for fanfic purposes has been pretty enlightening!

Those bangles everyone wears are their shields!

The inventory system is canonically the result of capsule technology a la Dragonball.

WORKS and the researchers on Pioneer 1 seem to be taking orders directly from the Coral government rather than Tyrell.

Newmen have unpredictable lifespans (kinda knew this one already, but it's neat to hear it from a character in the story)

There's a black market for Android parts, among other things.

Healing items have calories.

You can flush every monster down the toilet.

More to come! Hopefully I'll feel confident enough to write some lore-accurate-ish fanfic soon!

[the-cult-of-sato]

Visions from a better future...

Inspired entirely by someone saying "Sato sweep!" and activating me like a shitposting automaton.

...Also the funniest part was tracking down a rip of the full Ragol map from Episode III to make the map accurate, then drawing random borders only to decide to throw Colorado in as a gag.

Second funniest part was putting Olga Flow and Dark Falz as the other candidates and having the thought "If I color these red and blue, will someone take this as an actual political statement somehow?"

Then I remembered the only people who'll see this would be other people obsessed with PSO still, and I've probably run TTF with approximately 100% of them.

[the-cult-of-sato]

Making Satos to sell for Photon Drops but I never remember to sell them so I just end up with a stockpile of level 200 MAGs to give away to new players.

Basically, what I'm saying is if anyone's starting fresh on Ephinea, hit me up. The Kepler Kitties are taking up all my bank space.