ill take MEAT WONDERFUL for 2, 3, and 5 🥩
would you like fries with that 🍟
2. How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)
meat sprung fully-formed from my brow, dewy and sweet, in the middle of the night as i awoke from dreaming. here's a screenshot from march 2021 of the note i made! the indent in his hair for his nose actually wasn't intentional, but drawing on my phone made the shape happen and i went with it
the only part of his design that's really noticeably evolved is the addition and refining of his collar, which wasn't present in his original sketches. it was quickly added, then grew in size and shape until it took up most of his shoulders
Dec 2020 / Feb 2021 / Feb 2021 Mar 2022 / Jan 2023 / Jul 2025
i've refined how i've drawn him a bit, but he's never actually had any major design changes! his personality hasn't changed all too much, either
3. What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?
related to the the above screenshot, his appearance and personality came about the same time (4:06 am), then name, then his role in the story got sort of poured into place! lute was actually made after him and shoved next to him, which is funny given their whole deal. the original drafting of this looked something like them trying to return him to thorn (princess didn't exist conceptually yet) and being prevented from this by circumstance
5. How did you choose their name and why? Was it simply based on vibes or is there any specific meaning behind the name? Are the reasons behind their name different in- and out of universe?
i honestly have no clue if the words "meat wonderful" came from anywhere in particular, but i do know that the idea for a name structured like his (i.e. nonsense, noun-adjective in a grammatically nothing combination) was inspired by a lot of my friends being fans of lobotomy corporation at the time. the abnormalities have similarly odd names! i never played it, but iirc that's in part due to the original korean studio falling victim to a scam when outsourcing the english translation. so the not-really-names like Shy Look Today, We Can Change Anything, Behavior Adjustment, Nothing There, etc. really captured me and i knew before i made him i really wanted something named like that.
in canon, there's no given reason for his name to be MEAT WONDERFUL nor any reason for the proper capitalization, the same way there's no given reason for his cartoonish vantablack structure or stark white skin or disappearing mouth or size, all literal facts about him that people recognize as other and strange, not meta stylizations or visual metaphors. the meta thing is the intentional choice not to provide or even fully conceive of an explanation, the point is that meat is both different in a way that's not understood and as much of a person as anyone else.
