Screw it, more Beepbox OCs. I've already made a post about what I'd call the main characters, so this one will deal with the supporting cast. These characters are generally less thought out, and won't have example music. Brief reminder of the set up: the Title Not Found universe is a futuristic world of anthropomorphic slash cybernetic animals where all named characters are part of the world's music scene and are based on presets from music making website BeepBox cus I’m a nerd.
Voice Ooh: A digital fish guy who's mostly been used as the response singer in multiple of my FNF covers. I like to add some distortion to it to get it to stand out more, so I guess a more accurate name would be Distorted Voice Ooh, but that implies a few too many things for me right now.
Electric Piano 1/"Keys": Send home the locksmith, this squirrel named Keys, and I designed him solely because I wanted a third rival character to go with Solo & Distortion. I have unfinished covers of Kidnap The Sandy Claus and Pasta Night that use all three, but that's the extent. If Distortion's the anti mouse, then Keys is the mouse foil.
Solo Bass: So there's blue and yellow vocalists (Vox & Soprano). Is there a red one? Kinda :D Solo Bass is also blue, the lighter one before purple in the channel order, but since that one's really far down she often gets shoved into red. I didn't realize that I liked the instrument until I used it for the acapella segment of my cover of Tetris Type Blu2. She's the mouse of the vocalists, insecure and nervous. She might also be a squirrel, I don't remember my thought process.
Yowie: Yowie is very unique for a BeepBox instrument. Each full note has it make the full yowie sound, if you use a half note then you can cut off the sound, but if there's two smaller notes in a full note then the yowie sound can change pitch. For this reason, I've mostly used yowie as a sound effect. Like the wows in Big Shot or the yikes in Stuck Inside. A full character idea didn't come until I covered We Are Number One, with Yowie as the backup singers/clones. Yowie is now the only character to technically be multiple. They're just a… What's the plural of weasel? *one Google later* A confusion of weasels, that exist mostly to act as minions when needed. I don't see them as rivals or anything, they're just better acquainted with the ones who ARE rivals.
Dubstep Yoi: I hate Dubstep Yoi as an instrument. It sounds gross and is best used to create a bit-crushed mess for when that's what you want to be scary. But because I hate it, I also have an emotional attachment and interpretation that makes coming up with a design and character easier. Yoi is the most robotic of the characters and has the least animal influence. He's mostly outdated by the standards of technology in this universe, but he manages. Think of the movie Robots and how outdated bots there worked. I've also started thinking of him, Solo Bass, and the Yowies and friends.
Polysynth & Steel Drum Synth:Okay maybe there's one more confirmed group. The designs for these guys came first then I gave the instruments. Polysynth is just a chill guy, you know? A DJ, he's happy to hang as long as you are. Steel Drum is inspired by an art piece I did with beetles, with added elements of those flying things from The Path of Pain from Hollow Knight.
And that's the rest of the gang. Almost. I've still got a few left, but I'd categorize them into a Other category. If you read all of that, thank you. If you want to keep reading my stuff you can find more by searching on my blog.
On Apple Music I have a playlist dedicated to all the Title not Found characters. Collectively. It also has music I’ve covered using BeepBox, and music that sounds like something I’d make in BeepBox. It really needed to be split up but I have too many playlists on Apple. However, I’ve gotten myself a SoundCloud account for tournament community reasons, so SoundCloud playlists for the public! I’ve tried to keep the music between the two consistent but some songs on SoundCloud requires a paid subscription, and I’m not doing that. I’m also trying not to put to many reuploads on music in it for moral reasons. Enjoy music i like filtered through a rocker wolf and a edgy hare. Any questions on WHY I associate the music are appreciated, I put way too much thought into some of these.
Speaking of them, their relationship has changed from frequently collaborating to being in the same band. The two have distinct sounds from one another, but the more I listened to music from the Apple playlist the more elements of each others stuff came across in in my head. Aggression in some of Solo’s music, synths and chips in Distortions, Andrea Storm Kaden in JTMusic. It just stopped feeling justified. The name is not great, but it is something.
So this is just kind of a thing I do with my characters, and I really felt like just putting pen to digital paper with it. I think it’s interesting and something other people should think about themselves, though I understand why someone wouldn’t want to. It works for me pretty well for people like me with a dozen different worlds and stories, and if you don’t then I get why it feels kind of unesecary.
Okay, I’m dancing around the thing itself. Be warned it’s founded on my really niche taste in music.
Animatics. You know what those are. When you form a mental connection with a song and a character/plot point you make a whole thing in your head and if you’re lucky it will one day become real. That’s my thought process anyway. And recently most of my musical interest has been aligned to Mashups. More specifically Mashup Tournaments. To briefly explain, a Mashup Tournament is when multiple pop culture characters are made to go against each other. Each characters core themes are separated into their Sources, and ideally the sources should make for a musically diverse roster. Here’s an example of one character, Hat Kid from A Hat In Time. And since I uncontrollably visualize music I thought “Hey, what if I connect my characters to the characters in the tournament” and I think you should do it do that too.
I do this anyway for non mashup stuff too. I can’t be the only person who tries to fit their OCs into preexisting stories. I do this on three levels: Personality, character relations, and role in the story. BUT, when it comes to the tournaments, the characters already have a list of things that you can latch onto. Now of course sources like “songs by X artist/label” or “songs from this game genre/studio” won’t apply to the average persons characters but the more general things like dreams and elements and murder can apply to characters. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t still go off of vibes and roles in story. For a personal example, in my SoundCloud OC playlist, Distorted Vocals, Solo Soprano is associated with music from Madeon and Uramkio. Madeon is done on vibes (edgy & synth-y), and Urimiko is done on role in the story (rival to the main character).
This also allows for really interesting pairings of characters that you’d never think about otherwise. (This is the part that works better with lots of different characters. If you only have the one story and a small cast then I feel like it’d get kinda redundant.) You can put them together because of thematic reasons, and put them as a team, but where it’s easier to see is in the matches. These are tournaments based around music, so when characters go head to head they get a mashup that uses both of their sources. Animatics come back here, the fight scenes and interactions from having two completely unrealted characters put together is fascinating. Some things I’ve envisioned: Mashup Week Megamix winners round 2 match 8 (All-Star Barkley vs DIO) Mii alien girl fights against the serpentine god of the earth and actually needs to get serious, Temporary Flight Attendant losers round 1 match 4 (Chaos Cohorts vs King Slime), The unofficial god of creation and this smoke wolf thing get way too mad at a slime that’s admittedly an Egg Boi ripoff, and another Mashup Week one (Mann VS Machine Neo ~ 7th Wave(Metteton vs Heavy Weapons Guy)) A pirate cat and a news anchor bird with weather powers fight it out on the storming seas, and I could go on. But right now there is one reason that I decided to write this. And that is the flood of ideas that have come with my current interest in Alterna Concept.
Alterna Concept is like other tourney’s, but it has a specific gimmick. All the characters are suppose to be alternate universe versions of their characters, allowing for even crazier possibilities. Granted, other tournaments get crazy too, it’s just this one gives a reason. But I thought that it’d be neat if I altered my ocs in a similar way to the characters in the tournament. Which means MPCat is currently getting compressed and distorted like EXEna (my gurl). The aforementioned Serpent god of the earth succeeds in his evil plans and takes over his world like Dr Doofenschmertiz, Ruler of the Tristate Area (my 2nd gurl). But then there are two that I’ve gotten really invested in.
Can’t Wait Any Longer, a dual track between Titian Wightey, an evil Captain Underpants themed as Titan from Mega Mind, and Jam Commander Bugs, Bugs Bunny from the webcomic Scoo & Shag. Distortion Guitar fills the role of Titan, though I haven’t listened too much to his music, it’s mostly a vibes/personality thing. And Vox Synth is bugs because Rabbits. But because this Bugs is evil, Vox is also evil, and I’m kind of going crazy. Okay, the oc stuff I see. The song starts, Super Powered Distortion and Vox prepare for a face off, and after all the build up (when Big Chungus gets killed in the video) Vox gets forcible dragged through a portal and in her place Evil Vox comes out who I’ve so far imagined as a Doc Oc/Matrix kind of thing, and Distortion guitar has to re aim their focus with this much more competent opponent who’s actually out for blood. The fight ends with them both put through the wringer and Evil Vox makes a “tactile retreat” back through the portal and in her place normal Vox flies out.
This next one has nothing to do with Title Not Found, and requires explaining.
Samuel is a skeletal bird character I’ve had for a long time, but not that long compared to others. His story involved him being dissatisfied with his position of power, works as a henchmen for another villain out of revenge, and then stabs that guy in the back. The position of power eventually turned into his homeworld of Purgatory, heavily inspired by The Stupendium’s Rest Employed, and by heavily I mean I ripped it off except the skeletons are also birds. Purgatory then got put into another story about DEATH with heaven and hell. Purgatory stayed largely the same, but the place was ruled over by a fallen angel that sort of willingly became Purgatory itself, now fused with the ground and electrical and is essentially a computer monster now. Even though Samuel doesn’t do it in the story any more I still envision scenarios where he does take over Purgatory, typically involving killing Computer Guy. What Alterna Concept character do I associate this with? None of them, to be honest. I associate Samuel with a character because of one source and very general personality. One personality I keep coming back to is ‘serious’ and the only differences between ‘serious’ characters is how long their patience lasts. Solo Soprano is also a ‘serious’ character but I imagine her to have enough tolerance to others to hang out with people and only after significant derailing does she decide to record herself singing Thermodynamic Lawyer as a vent. Samuel does not have a long fuse. For most of existence he has worked as the bird keeping everything in line at Purgatory, and in the events of the DEATH story things get very out of hand very fast. He has not had to deal with things going so catastrophically wrong before, and Computer Guy rules with a literal and figurative iron first, he will just destroy Samuel if he stops being needed. Now what Alterna Concept character is it? It’s mother fucking Buzzcut’s Basics.
Buzzcut’s Basics is the drill sergeant teacher from Beavis & Butthead. You may recognize him from when he’s teaching Sex Education and yells things I won’t repeat. But, he is also Baldi from Baldi’s. Why? Because he had taught Sex Education, and one man decided to make a Baldi’s Basics song that is very, very sexual... He is my third favorite character. He has, among other things; MTV, adult animation, DAGames, his collaborators, viral horror, suggested themes, profanity, education, and game jams. What the hell does this have to do with Samuel? The only thing that really fits is DAGames, mostly because of musical vibes. I also thought it rather in character for Samuel to kill his boss, be in charge, and still have to get stuck with a bunch of sources that don’t fit him. But then i thought of something better.
Back in 2021 when Man On The Internet what releasing WITH LYRICS covers of chapter 2 songs he released Killer Queen WITH LYRICS and I thought “hu…. If YouTube had a villain song this would be it.” This then launched a short lived attempt making my own story for a App/Website Humans thing that worked around those lyrical covers because animatics, that’s how I structure plot. Then they released the BIG SHOT cover and I had to think of something Spamton like. I couldn’t think of anything so I just kinda took the chaotic energy and associated it with Deviantart. The story gone anywhere in any other way, my internal design for Deviantart is all that’s survived, and it’s only done that because she the best fit for characters in tournaments that have sexual themes as a source. The characterization is probably closer to the way people portray TikTok, I think, I’ve not looked into it too much I’m just aware of the concept. Angle Dust from Hazbin Hotel is another comparison.
So as you can guess these characters, from different stories with completely different personalities, on a team, is funny, and even if it’ll never officially happen you can be happy to know that it exists and somewhere out there they’re going through it making it work. It can even help you boost up a character that may have been underdeveloped before.
I’ve done this other times, mostly related to that “unofficial god of creation”, (who doesn’t have a name by the way,) because I the story itself is all over the place and she would need to be a Selena two threat because of that. It’s a whole thing. I associate her with Forum Freakshow(Fred Astaire 1 is her theme song) because of the personality/vibes, and the chaotic news of his YTP sources. That chaos is also why I associate her with Dracula non Oscillas because of “heavey sampling”. The first team I thought of for her, The Chaos Cohorts, her and other unnamed smoke wolf character, she’s Bill Cipher, he’s discord, and would definitely kill each other if not for how much they agree on. Dial Tone Telephone from MASH N’ UP is her and a lizard person conspiracy theorist character I made as joke, and the lizard is deeply regretting the team up. Uncle Grandpa for a Day Fawful gave off vibes of both creation god and MPCat because the music gave off vibes of both of them. It’s just that MPCat has a genuine intent and pureness, while creation god has a very specific “fuck you” energy. Those two together creates a neat boss minion dynamic. TUMBLEWOOD’s Banana Crew her and Dubstep Yoi off of MPCats recommendation, because of the sampling, and 21st century humor which also has the right energy.
Uh, moral of the story, shove characters that wouldn’t normally go together and see what the hell will happen.
