Took a lil break from the asks in order to cook some ✨SMILING CRITTERS FAMILY TIME✨ with @rexmk0153universe-blog because why the hell not??? I might have to divide it in two parts though-
(1/2)
DogDay
DogDay's journey begins when a stork delivers him to the wrong family of wolves, leading him to be adopted by Big Bad's parents. However, his presence triggers jealousy in Big Bad, his adopted older brother, who resents the attention their parents give to the newcomer.
Despite the pack's focus on abilities related to weather phenomena, Dogday stands out due to his unique qualities and talents. As he grows older, he feels a deep longing for a sense of purpose and identity beyond his wolf upbringing. Seeking to find his true self, he leaves the pack and ventures to Jolly Valley, where he encounters the Smiling Critters and forms close bonds with them. Over time, Dogday becomes a leader among the Smiling Critters, embodying their values of friendship and unity.
Big Bad, driven by pride and a mix of emotions, followed Dogday to Jolly Valley, intending to both antagonize his little brother and secretly monitor his progress. Despite his outward bravado and mischievous nature causing ocassional trouble, Dogday remains welcoming towards his older brother, except when his antics go too far. Hus unwavering cheerfulness and open-heartedness serve as a beacon of hope for both the Smiling Critters and his troubled older brother.
BONUS: "Big Bad" is actually a nickname! His actual name is "WindWolf"... Dogday usually calls him "Big Bro", but the rest of the critters "misheard" it and began calling him "Big Bad", much to his dismay.
CatNap
Catnap shares a unique connection with a deity known as SandMan, who reigns over the Dream Realm, a distinct reality separate from the main universe. The origin of Catnap traces back to a moment when Dogday, as a young member of his pack, made a wish upon a shooting star for a friend, and this wish brought Catnap into existence.
SandMan took particular interest in Catnap due to his remarkable qualities, leading to a special father-son dynamic between them, despite Catnap starting off as just another creation of SandMan like many others.
Catnap, however, felt a strong pull to leave the Dream Realm in search of Dogday, the source of his creation. Eventually, the feline succeeded in finding Dogday and chose to remain by his side, along with the other Smiling Critters. Despite Catnap's origin in the Dream Realm and his connection to SandMan, his loyalty lies with Dogday and their companions, forging a lasting bond beyond the confines of the Dream Realm.
Kickin'Chicken
Kickin'Chicken comes from a predominantly female family, consisting of his mother, sisters, and himself as the middle sibling. His father, known as "Rockin'Rooster," is a famous singer, an example that Kickin' aspires to follow. However, Rockin'Rooster's focus on his career leaves little time for family, causing conflicting emotions for Kickin'. Despite his admiration for his father's success, Kickin' yearns for more attention and connection within the family... Yet he hides it under his "cool and tough guy" persona.
However, among his family members Kickin' has a strong bond with his older sister, Pecky. She is level-headed compared to Kickin', but shares his adventurous spirit and openness to new experiences and people.
BONUS: Kickin's family is quite fond of Bubba Bubbaphant, given how he was Kickin's first friend and all of them consider him another member of the family.
CraftyCorn
Craftycorn, born in a magical kingdom governed by four elemental monarchs (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades) was raised as the daughter of the Queen of Spades, destined to become a warrior. However, Crafty harbored a distaste for violence, finding joy in art and nature instead.
Despite her mother's attempts to grant her freedom to choose her path within the elemental realms, the other rulers disapproved, doubting Crafty's suitability for the throne. When Craftycorn was to receive her royal Merry Charm, symbolizing her assigned role, she unexpectedly manifested her own charm—the flower. Fearing disappointment from her mother and influenced by the other monarchs, Craftycorn fled her home, unaware of the devastation her departure caused her mother.
Their relationship is complicated, marked by love and care, yet tinged with Crafty's mixed feelings towards her mother.
LoolaLamb
Loola is a special sheep born into a flock known as the "Sleep Sheep" or "Slumbering Guardians." These sheep have the unique role of wandering through villages, signaling to people that it's time to sleep and seek safety from the dangers of the night. Once their task is complete, SandMan, a mystical entity who the sheep "worship" due to its previous helps toward the flock, can traverse their realm to ensure everyone enjoys peaceful dreams and restful sleep.
She's the daughter of the flock's leader, tasked with protecting the sheep, particularly during the day when they're less vigilant due to needing rest after their nightly duties. However, Loola lost her mother at a young age and was raised by her father, who prepared her to take on a similar role in the future.
Despite her upbringing, Loola yearns for adventure and exploration beyond the confines of her flock's duties. After much persuasion, her father allows her to leave, although they maintain communication through letters.
The lamb often travels alone, but occasionally spends time with the Smiling Critters in Jolly Valley for extended periods of time.
My guy Klay Thompson wins the Comeback Player of the year at the ESPYS. Also throwing up that Big Bad banging hella 4s on these dirty scraps . 😂😂😂😂 #BigBad #ESPYS #klaythompson https://www.instagram.com/p/CgSwyRVAfSJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
like NO jacks doesn’t want a cute chaste romantic kiss as proof his curse is broken, he wants to be torn into a thousand pieces and then stitched back together wrong!!! because at least then chrysi’s finally remade him into something that’s HERS!!!!!!!!!!!
finally realizing why it's so common for villains to also be amazing fighterguys at a statistically unlikely level, in addition to whatever else they have going on......I did not do that and now at a certain point it's like...yeah that person is evil and very clever but at the end of the day it's just a person...you could just kill them. and you wouldn't even have to try very hard....
I accidentally opinion’d all over myself, and I quickly ran out of character space to respond. I didn’t want to have to type like eight comments because I wasn’t sure if you’d get pinged with a bunch of notifications you don’t want, so I decided to just post it all as one big post if that’s okay!
Maybe it's just because I'm far too invested in my own muse and therefore struggle to release the image I have of him in my head. xD But that voice, to me, sounds really off for the character its portraying. It sounds like a cheap anime dub: like it was just someone hired to get the job done quickly. It was very generic, very ‘monster-of-the-week’; something we might have seen back in the days of the FOXBox or Kids WB. To me there was just no real depth to the sound of his voice. Ganondorf is thunderous, he's grandiose -- he's BIG! Granted, we only got a small sample, but the emotion projected through his vocals was just very weak, too. It was as if the actor wasn’t at all invested in the character he’s reading for. When Ganondorf talks about Hyrule, we should be able to hear the seething hatred drip off of his tongue as if speaking the very name “Hyrule” is like poison in his mouth. This is a Hyrule that has literally driven him to know nothing else but rage and hatred and malice: this is a Hyrule that has stolen his very people away from him. The Gerudo turned their back on their own king and as a result have aligned themselves with Hyrule. This is the ultimate knife in the heart, we as fans have an opportunity to hear a glimpse of how much pain Ganondorf should be in regarding Urbosa and Riju’s very deliberate defiance of their own king and their people’s bloody history...
The performance we get, for some reason, invokes images of that “while you were partying I studied the blade” meme. Like, he sounds like some edgy senior in high school that took himself too seriously and suffered a temper tantrum in the middle of the gymnasium because he feels disrespected by the other kids, or something. Like, yeah I’m being a little funny here, but what I mean is the performance is underplayed: like he’s acting with restraint, he’s holding himself back. Whether it’s because of Nintendo’s direction, or he’s a newer voice talent, or he genuinely doesn’t know the character well enough to know better -- I don’t know...
And I’ll be totally real: my personal impression of this interpretation of Ganondorf could very well just be confirmation bias. I don’t think so, but I’ll acknowledge that it COULD be. I made a crude remark about how Ganondorf has been neutered by this presentation we got -- which I should be fair and acknowledge the fact that there ARE fans out there who have mentioned how they like the casting, voice, and performance -- but the truth of the matter is, Ganondorf has been in some really bad shape since Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword made some huge retcons to existing Zelda lore by introducing us to Hylia and Demise. Now, I like to write and study and analyze characters, but one doesn’t really need to be any kind of writing genius to understand how Demise’s existence and his actions by the end of the game completely rob Ganondorf of his agency and undermines the guy by overly-simplifying his motivations and by breaking down any dimension he previously had as a man, a leader, and a human.
Ganondorf used to be such an interesting character: he wanted so much for the people he ruled over, cared about, and loved. Him and his mothers and his sisters experienced pain every day and saw that not far from their desert was a country protected and thriving off of a fair wind. His heart motivated him. His people motivated him. Pain motivated him. Wind Waker made it clear that his intentions were beautiful before Ganondorf had fallen to his own humanity. He took a knee to his own greed, and power was a seductive mistress.
The reason why the character Ganon eventually took the shape of Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time in the first place was so they could write stories that had a more human element and could thus encourage the player to consider that while the Triforce might represent black-and-white principles, the world itself is much more complicated than that and tends to be much more difficult to navigate which gives rise to more interesting adventures for Link to go on, and morally and emotionally complex challenges to face. But now that Demise’s stupid curse has stripped Ganondorf of any kind of meaningful nuance, Ganondorf has been tragically reduced to a character that’s feeling around in the dark: his culture and history has since turned its back on him so now his feet walk with no meaning. So, to compensate, Breath of the Wild saw the stakes raise and they went the route of the Oracle games where they re-introduced the idea where Ganon is now an evil that is just SOOO EVIL that it literally couldn’t fathom anything else EXCEPT rage and hate, as well as inflicting pain and suffering by lashing out in blind desperation to cause hurt and spread chaos. But then Nintendo went and struck that down just as fast as they re-introduced the concept in Breath of the Wild. So now we’re are quite literally left with a corpse: an empty husk of a really important character that once knew how to impact you with his time on the screen. This nearly unrecognizable shadow of Ganondorf demands that his followers “leave no survivors”, which is particularly disappointing to hear because it’s indicative of the underlying problem that’s been haunting this character since 2011.
(These three screenshots demonstrate a very important facet of Ganondorf’s character that Nintendo seems to have gotten wrong right off the bat in that trailer. He doesn’t want to destroy everything and leave no survivors. He wants to dominate and take what he feels rightfully belongs to him.)
But I really don’t mean to get into this huge whine-fest about Ganondorf, I’m just... I am just really bummed out because it’s the first time that we’ve seen Ganondorf (NOT Ganon) in a mainline Zelda game in almost seventeen years and it’s hard to see his return take this kind of shape. I love this character to death, I have so much adoration for Ganondorf in my heart and I know for a fact that this is gonna be a great game; I know Nintendo will absolutely not waste our times with Tears of the Kingdom, I know I’m gonna have a total fuckin’ blast playing the game and being able to come face-to-face with Ganondorf for the first time since I was eleven years old will definitely be a thrill of a lifetime.
But it sure as hell won’t be the same.
I think we might be getting some Stanford Era Dean in The Winchesters. Baby has the "KAZ" number plate from early seasons. Hes still got the samulet. Hes on his own with no Sam around and in the Pilot, Dean said he had been down in New Orleans. New Orleans, where a lot of the Winchesters seems to be taking place.
My illustration created for Hit Point Press’s"Big Bads" now on Kickstarter. I don't get to draw creatures as much as I'd like to. What do you think?
"Big Bad" now on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hitpointpress/big-bads?ref=project_tweet•
Creating "Well Dweller" on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/81696975?pr=true