Nationally Licensed Sparklemonger

My name is Megan and I'm an artist mostly. When I'm not an artist, I'm a Starbucks Barista. I live in northern California with my boyfriend in a filthy nerd hovel of an apartment. Art content posted here is gonna be mostly concept art for my webcomic, Laserwing. I made this theme myself, let me know if anything is broken.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

Gonna focus on getting Pepperspark through the puppetry skill questline, maybe the chain slash one too, and leveling if it's not too repetetive.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

Doing some event quests in Mabinogi, and then possibly pushing Pepperspark down more skill questlines (puppets, chain blades) if there's time. Probably a short-ish stream overall.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I kept wanting to write silly pet mouse stuff over this picture of Satoshi. Like "I chewed through all the toilet paper rolls can I have more" but in doing so I realized that I just...cannot imagine a Pikachu doing real mouse things. I can absolutely envision a human chewing through a bunch of toilet paper rolls for fun, but that's not quite what's going on here

[veryimportantsparkles]

We got to Fuchsia City and in the Virtual Console release of Yellow they enabled the surfing minigame so you don't need the special Pikachu to access it. It used to be PIKCHU's special exclusive game and he's been really frustrated that he can't Surf anymore. So I let him out there to splash around. He got a little worked up about it, but I think he'll be okay.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I wanted to draw Satoshi and realized as I was doing it that in my mind he's always stressed out or pouting or looking for attention. I'm not sure exactly why. Is he stressed because of me? Do I need to take him to the vet?

[veryimportantsparkles]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

streaming Mabinogi again, Pepperspark's got master plan stuff to do and maybe some regular skill questlines (astrology, chain slash)

[veryimportantsparkles]

It's been a while since I did a drawing, I got sloppy with the coloring because my wrist hurts

[veryimportantsparkles]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

Meant to do this earlier in the week but work schedule got in the way

ready for another round of Pepperspark trying to participate in the Summer Master Plan and probably dropping off

[veryimportantsparkles]

I've been working on Shiroma for a while! Work's been rough so I kept having to work on this in exhausted one-hour bursts. Then got sidetracked by petsites (again) but I remembered to post her.

I've always been the type of person who avoids cheats in video games, especially when you had to buy a whole separate device to work them. Ultimately I don't care what other people do but there used to be a lot of kids on the playground who bragged about their GameShark antics like they actually accomplished something, and it always rubbed me the wrong way as a kid. That's why it's astounding that it took me so long to realize that Shiroma was a hacked Mew. Some kid, I don't even remember his face, was offering to give the kids in class free Mews and I said yes. We were an astonishingly trusting 6th grade class who apparently all brought our Game Boys to school at once and I don't even remember why. I was off talking to someone else and the kid handed me my stuff back with a Mew in battle for me to catch. I really should have figured out what was happening, and also shouldn't have let someone walk away with my Game Boy with the Pokemon cartridge in it. It's a miracle nothing was stolen that day.

Anyways that kid was clearly trying to give everyone a gift, but...having a fake Pokemon was deeply embarassing once I realized it. She's not a real Mew. I know it's unreasonable for any kid to have gotten a real one back in the day, but I did have the real Surfing Pikachu, it's not impossible. If I had known, I would've said no thanks to the GameShark kid. But I had her, and she was an important part of my team. I remember her strongly after all this time, so clearly she was special to me.

In my Virtual Console 3DS Yellow run she's been reincarnated as a Clefairy because that's close enough. It's pink, it has cat ears, it learns a lot of TMs, there we go. And this gave me a unique opportunity to do something weird with a cross-species design. Mew Shiroma is an almost plastic-looking rail-thin magical girl, but Clefairy Shiroma seems happier and more alive. And Clefable Shiroma is a wholly new person, but with her past held close because she's not ashamed.

In addition to a bullshit backstory, Shiroma's a whole reference character. My first Playstation game was Chocobo's Dungeon 2 and I really liked Shiroma, the white mage girl. I think it's just that there were only a few named characters in that game and the human girl is of course the most relatable. Anyways she's pink and Mew is pink so my Shiroma is pink. I had a lot of fun taking the design for her and adapting it into a Mew and a Clefairy, and then steering away to make Clefable Shiroma more of her own character. I mean, she's still definitely a Final Fantasy white mage but she's not a clone.

Anyways this is my silliest character yet, and I love her.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I actually did have a Nintendo Power surfing Pikachu! My mom's hobby was entering sweepstakes and she'd enter all the ones in the magazines we read. Apparently when she won the Pikachu, she bought Yellow and had my little brother get it to the point that you can do trades (going up to Viridian and back, getting the Pokedex). They mailed the cartridge in and it came back with PIKCHU on it. That was my birthday present in April the next year.

So anyways, PIKCHU is a little jerk. As a traded Pokemon he basically just never listened to me. We were in a constant cycle of disobedience, then I'd get a badge, then he'd level up past that badge's obedience limit, then I'd have to get the next badge. But of course he never left my party. I went through the whole game with two Pikachu that never left the party and never evolved.

Josh caught a new PIKCHU for me in VC Red on his own 3ds to trade to me in VC Yellow on mine. So PIKCHU is resurrected with all his attitude problems intact. If anything he's more surly and unmanageable because he doesn't have Surf anymore. He's maintained an enormous ego even though he's been stripped of the things that made him special, and that has been extremely funny for me. Deep down he's very frustrated but he's been a jackass for so long that he can't just say it. He is NOT a stupid normie Pikachu and he does NOT want headpats and a snack to comfort him when he's sad. He will NOT be friends with Satoshi, who is a loser, and he will NOT stop spamming Double Team when I told him to use Thunderbolt.

His design is obviously modeled after Gary/Blue as a counterpart to Satoshi. The Dragon Quest elements of his design are meant to compliment the third member of my core team, who is a Final Fantasy reference. There's no deeper meaning to that one, it just made sense and worked out pretty well visually.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I realized while doing my virtual console Yellow playthrough that 'Pikachu' was a nebulous concept in the 90s. It's like Yoshi. They're clearly a species and nobody ever denies that but there's always the One Individual whose name is the species name and they're everywhere.

The Pikachu in Yellow is obviously Ash's Pikachu. But it's kind of unspoken that the Pikachu in Hey You! Pikachu is also that Pikachu, but not. Same design and personality, even if it's clearly just some other random Pikachu. Same with the Pikachu from the Pokemon Pikachu handheld virtual pet thingies. Same with the Pikachu in Smash, until the Pikachu Libre alt shows up in Ultimate. Logically they can't all be the same guy but it was understood that all Pikachus are Pikachu unless you actively created your own personality for yours.

That's what really pushed me to lean into the idea I had started, that my Yellow gijinkas were going to be fusion designs with other games from my childhood. Link is ALSO a pointy-eared Nintendo mascot who keeps showing up in illogical iterations that are clearly separate guys and yet all the same guy. He's simultaneously an audience surrogate that you relate to when you navigate a fantastical world, and a cute little gremlin you can just look at.

So the angle I'm going with in Satoshi is that he's experiencing some distress at the idea that he's a copy of someone else. Additionally there are a lot of extra systems and restrictions in Yellow that really bind that starter Pikachu to the game. He doesn't like the idea that he belongs to the game world, unlike every other Pokemon in my party who are personal companions to me specifically. But then again, his desire to be seen as one of MY little guys is at odds with his desire to be seen as his own fully realized person. He's kind of like Air Bud taking the newspaper away from the clown. He's declared his independence but he's still a dog.

Like a lot of my recent Pokemon characters, Satoshi is a recreation of a Pokemon I used to have in a now-dead Game Boy cartridge. In his original life he didn't have a name, he was just PIKACHU. Unlike other beloved companions like Tortoise and Eliza, I really didn't consider him to be 'mine.' He was just Pikachu. So his personal journey is in developing who he is, as well as proving that he was a meaningful part of my childhood for his own sake, not just because he's Pikachu.

[popkas]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

Streaming again! Last time, I got up to the final boss of Rayman 2 but it's a real rough boss. The goal tonight is to beat it, which is tough but won't take ALL night. So afterwards we're switching over to Pokemon Champions. Josh has played it a bit on his own since it came out but we've never streamed it. Join us and we'll nitpick it together!

[veryimportantsparkles]

I ride a missle into the rising lava until the robot explodes.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I'm working on gen 4 battle tower mons, and apparently Lanturn is recommended as a counter to Palmer's Milotic. So I caught a bunch of Chinchou and looked over their stats and picked one that has potential. I thought I'd cap off my night by drawing a cute little Chinchou but I noticed for the first time in my life that this creacher has FEET. I thought the two nubs in the back were tail fins, what the crap!

edit: apparently I actually learned this in 2018 but then forgot

[veryimportantsparkles]

Drew these while level grinding. All very tentative designs! Replaying Yellow after so many years feels very comfy but also much much more like a classic RPG than like a 'Pokemon game' in the way we think of them in the modern day. All the tropes aren't set in stone yet and I'm looking at that raw state with fresh eyes. So all my guys are veering more fantasy-based than most of my gijinkas.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Probably mostly final designs for Maria, Steely, and Hopscotch.

I've been so out of practice with human figures that I kept having to hack apart and rotate and resize parts of the sketches to make sure all the proportions looked acceptable. Because otherwise everyones' legs were just wonking out and way too big and/or small. Clearly the solution is to draw more, so I'll try doing that.

My Soul Silver file is mostly complete other than postgame legendaries and dex completion and side stuff like Pokeathlon. But now I gotta do a bunch of migration from 3rd to 4th gen and onward and make sure I have good battle tower/frontier teams to leave behind in 4th when I go to 5th...and also I'm working on a bunch of other games simultaneously. It's a lot but I'm getting there!

[veryimportantsparkles]

Every time I draw a horse it's like I've never seen a horse in my life and I have to relearn horse legs all over again. These aren't really horses though, I didn't realize how goatlike they were until I zoomed in on the originals, which are very small.

They're Stellaricorns, from 4dopt, which is a great petsite I wish I could recommend right now BUT registration is closed at the moment. I'll try to remember to say something about it when they open back up, they're working on recoding the site right now. When they're open again they're really worth checking out!

[popkas]

Watch this video on Twitch Live

It was my birthday a few days ago and we're doing a belated birthday stream! Apparently it's become vague tradition to do some kind of N64 game for my birthday. This time it's Rayman 2. I think the last time I played this must have been...25 years ago? Something like that. Josh has never played it, I think. Let's see how much I remember.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Reblonging to main also