#and insects in general love me some arthropods too

[wordy-little-witch]

Had a sudden moment of CLARITY and anyway Russian Buggy

Buggy who's multilingual and whose cultural development is EXPANSIVE but who also clings to his roots a bit.

Buggy who, upon losing EVERYTHING after Roger's execution, drifted for a while, and then decided to return to his homeland - to know where he came from, to find where he will go.

He finds home and community and he learns. He learns so much and his access to the language comes as easily as breathing to him - something both surprising and not, given his proclivities with learning. He takes to it like a fish to water, and he carries that home, that place, that history, on with him even still to this day.

Just. Idk, I feel like his voice and cadence would sound LOVELY in Russian and I feel like he'd actually THRIVE with that and yes I was watching a Chernobyl documentary but LEAVE ME ALOJE LET ME COOK-

#buggy the clown #headcanons #sleepy thoughts #plz god i am so tired #why yes i do work two jobs and also dabble in silly goosery #i am a busy bee #and a sleepy bee #i love bees #and insects in general love me some arthropods too #hah imagine a deep sea one piece au #oh no-

[ms-scarletwings]

The Speculative Analysis About Irkens No One Asked For: Part II

Hiya! Back at it again with not shutting up about the lil green dudes. In case you found this first, here’s the Part One of this spiel, touching on some of the environmental theories about Irk and its cyberpunk-leaning cultural direction. While this post is dedicated to a more biological look of what’s going on with the Irkens, there was some leading context and other tidbits back in that one you may also enjoy, too.

So, carrying through what we previously set up, I want to… admit off the bat that, I found it a little difficult at first, you know?-To pick an angle I wanted to sink my teeth into. With how old the show’s become and how creative & enthusiastic a fanbase it attracted, it’s getting hard to really note (or theorize) something about Irken anatomy that hasn’t been said before somewhere. And don’t get me wrong, that’s awesome and I love almost every word of it I’ve read. A lot of it from various sources is almost certainly going to bleed together into the first half of this. So, keep it in mind, yet I will try to chew a little deeper into the questions we can’t actually answer with just a rewatch of the show, all good? Because there’s a few more base things we know from the canon I’m going to include to start listing: - Irkens lack any visible form of nose or ears, but are equipped with a pair of sensory antennae. Presumably, these organs fulfill the same roles, as they do in real-world insects. - Irken organs are obviously very alien, not well explained, artificially enhanced, and hard to compare to that of a human’s- outside of their general body shape, the presence of a primary brain separate from the PAK, and the fact that they do possess something of an internal skeleton. - A petite race on average (relative to humans), Irkens universally follow an unquestioned social hierarchy based on individual height. - Irkens are endowed with a remarkable ability to regenerate and heal superficial injuries, even up to repairing the damage of being nearly skinned alive (chest-down) or severely burning their corneas within a matter of hours. - Their preferred diet is one that is rich in (if not primarily made of) refined carbohydrates, and while they seem to tolerate fatty sources, such as processed dairy, their anatomy is poorly suited for dealing with high-protein foods like beans and meat. - In fact, all forms of contact with exposed animal meat itself will cause it to dissolve and meld into their own flesh, via an incredibly painful process. - On contact with water from Earth, their skin will receive harsh chemical burns (This has been explained by Vasquez to be a consequence of impurities and man-made pollutants, which Irkens seem sensitive to). - While I’m already on a roll about their skin, it also contains/produces a substance capable of killing lice.

Now, I think we’ve all heard a lot about sqeedily spooches, but does anyone else want to keep marinating a second longer on the topic of s k i n ? Because I have some damn thoughts to release about Zim’s outer casing.

Let’s Get Chemical

First hot take, and the hill I am willing to be slain on: That ain’t actually skin! At least, it is nothing chemically alike to Earth-native vertebrate skin. I’ve given all of the above and the general running theme about Irkens resembling arthropods a lot of thought, and I’ve come to about the only conclusion I could that makes their dermis equivalent… make sense.

See, one of the biggest traits that sets apart invertebrates from other animals in real life is the “innie or outie” skeleton question, but you gotta understand that the “skeletons” that bugs and crabs have would still be considered something completely different from our endoskeletons even if they were on the inside. The hard tissues that make up OUR skeletal systems are mostly made up of a *collagen (remember that word!) frame that is reinforced by calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals. The hard parts of an ant’s skeleton, on the other foot, are mainly composited of chitin.

Chitin, now, is a very neat substance. It’s a polysaccharide, meaning that it’s made up of a bunch of sugar molecules chained together. This makes it distinct from proteins, which are made of amino acid chains instead of carbs. Chitin is also one of the single most important structural polymers in the universe to a ton of existing life. It makes up the literal backbone of arthropods and the cell walls of all fungi. We’ve even found it in fish scales and some amphibians. So, must also be important to humans, right? NAH. Not a chance. Higher animals actually long ditched the ability to synthesize the stuff, and are not any the worse for it, since there’s more than one way to stick a bunch of creature pieces together. For two examples, keratin and *collagen are proteins we naturally synthesize that functionally do the same thing. Keratin is the hard substance that makes up hair & fingernails, and collagen is practically the wonderglue of flesh: It’s a fundamental binder that holds together your bones, your skin, your precious muscle meats, the ligaments, the tendies, the nerves…

pretty much the whole person blueprint if you get the picture.

And thus concludes your (VERY overly simplified) highshcool bio class recap, but what the hell did that have to do with the cartoon spacemen again? I’m gonna round back to them through a funny secret about exoskeletons, actually: They have a softer part, too! Chitin’s hella diverse in its forms and utility. What’s in an exoskeleton is actually a version of it modified with other materials (like what’s done to collagen in bone) to make it so rigid and shell-like. A purer chitin, on the other hand, is more leathery and flexible, less like the shell of a beetle and more like the squishy wall around a caterpillar or maggot. Even the hard bodied insects still have an endocuticle layer like this hiding just under the “shell”, still considered part of the whole exoskeleton, but suddenly looking and acting more like we’d call a skin.

Eh, see where I’m going with this? My conviction is this- Irkens may have used to be even more arthropodal in an earlier stage of their evolution, including BOTH an internal skeleton, and some form of protective exoskeleton in their body plan. And hey, maybe the two were extensions of the same system once, too. You recognize something like that in modern tortoises when you remember that their “shells” are actually just the bone structure of their own ribcage. Then, let’s say that Irkens later saw the loss of their heavier exocuticle, leaving behind the endoskeleton and the flexible inner (now just an outer) cuticle of what used to be an entire body shell. This could have been a gradual change, via natural selection, or it could have been another artificial mutation brought on by technology- wherein the elder brains decided the feature was less efficient and simply phased it out of the cloning process- the same as the loss of their species’ sexual organs.

But, you’re thinking, why on Irk would the loss of an entire badass armor layer be beneficial to their fitness? Few reasons- For one, they are cumbersome and limiting. The downgrade on freedom of movement and flexibility they would be for a bipedal humanoid is self-explanatory enough. When it came to structural integrity, the inner skeleton would have already done a well job with little modification. For all the protection they provide, they don’t leave much room for expansion, and need to be shed in order for the animal to grow any further or to recover from certain injuries. The process of molting itself would be an excruciating process for any intelligent species to have to endure; one that also temporarily leaves the critter in a very vulnerable and stressed state for every molt. To advance from more primitive origins into a dominant race, manual dexterity and mobility would have to take a front seat over a small amount of modest defenses, and mind you, Irk long ago woulda managed to compensate for that loss in the form of advanced weaponry (obviously).

I’m also of the mind that the shift away from an exoskeleton could have even been the key to allowing the Irkens to even grow to the size they are now. Recall back to Part One for a second, where I shared the likely case for Irk having a massive bulk behind its gravity field. Gravity is a hard thing on any skeletal structure, representing a constant strain to be fought against when moving, growing, and bearing weight .There’s a lot of factors behind why we don’t have horse sized spiders or elephant sized lobsters IRL, and weight is actually one of them. Notice how terrestrial isopods only get about to the size of a bean, but the aquatic ones can top out at over a foot long? And that’s only having Earth’s level of gravity to struggle against, let alone however harsh the conditions would be on a larger planet. So, there’s my framework for explaining what I think the aliens’ cuticle is not; however, what does that mean for what it is, besides “feels and looks like a grub’s”?

Well, look again at some of the extraordinary things it can do.

Cooties Immunity

“Germs” was a memorable episode that posed a very legitimate question to the viewer. Why IS IT that foreign pathogens aren’t a bigger concern for the invaders? They’re literally sent off to other worlds to blend in: Socializing with the native inhabitants, eating their foods, and living in an alien habitat. In the case of an undiscovered rock like Earth, our infectious diseases would have no reference available to the Armada whatsoever. Sure, species incompatibility would provide some protection, but the risk of something carrying over and adapting is always still there. Zoonoptic jumps happen all the time with bacteria and viruses, and Zim’s body temperature IS in the normal human range. And what about fungal pathogens, or parasites-

Oh, wait, the lice episode gave it away right there.

I love this sequence so much, because it’s coincidentally like, an exact “art imitates life” parallel to something a real species of primate does. Black lemurs live in the same area of Madagascar as these vibrant, red millipedes.

The millipedes are special because when threatened, they secrete a poisonous substance from their skin. The lemurs are special because they like to grab the bugs and nibble them for no other reason than to make them release those toxins. Those chemicals are then rubbed into their fur, because somehow the lemurs figured out it makes a really handy mosquito repellant. The lemurs also like to get completely zonked out on the chemicals too but eyy- Point was it stands to reason that Irkens may also secrete small amounts of their own potent toxin from the cuticle, perhaps for more hygienic than defensive purposes. This secretion would be responsible for protecting them from parasites and topical infections. Could it also make people blazed out of their minds? …Maybe? I think I’d like to promote the “Just Say No” policy on the matter of licking aliens, though. Ffs at least ask them out to dinner first.

When it comes to other kinds of sick, looks like it might be the trusty old PAK to the rescue here again. I imagine that, being an intergalactic, partially mechanical civilization, the Irken race has come down this road enough to put in a workaround. A standard PAK contains the entirety of the population’s collective knowledge/history- which would include a catalog of all known infectious agents they have encountered across the universe. Some kind of nanobot-bolstered immune system that could detect and respond appropriately to new threats isn’t out of the question, nor should a feature that can automatically administer the appropriate medicine directly into the wearer’s bloodstream. For all this awesomeness, nonetheless, there remains a downside or two that they haven’t quite conquered..

The Meaty, Sweety, Mending of DOOM

Anyone ever actually think about how as far as resilience is concerned, Zim is practically an X-man compared to any Earthling? He has regenerative capabilities that surpass anything else on earth, save idk, bamboo shoots, if even. Injuries that would leave a human permanently disabled only seem to incapacitate an Irken for a few hours to a day at most. They’re all the more tough to put out of commission when considering that a PAK doubles as a form of backup life support, ready to “soft reboot” the host with a quick jolt if it detects a sudden drop in vital signs. It is tempting to credit the same device as the source of this healing boost as well, teasing the nanobot suggestion again; however, I see a chance instead to bring this back a step.

Although not as quick-acting as Zim, or Skoodge’s healing, there are some remarkable examples of regeneration in real arthropods, from repairing tissues/organs to replacing entire lost limbs. What the aliens are packing doesn’t seem all that different, only refined (through years of bioengineering) to work at a truly frightening efficiency. It shows through in their diet as well. Almost always, if we see a member of this species eating on screen, and believe me there was no shortage of examples, what are we watching them shovel their face with?

Space doughnuts, space popcorn, space Fun-Dip, sodas, and curly fries. Sure, there’s plenty of calories here, no doubt with the amount of carbs and grease that could even turn the stomach of a college freshman, but is this… nutrition?

Yes. Just not for us.

Like their civilization, we have also turned the mass production of sweet-packed, fat loaded foods into one of our favored art forms, and there are scattered pockets of our planet that can enjoy these items in cheap abundance. The catch 22? Obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, Irkens are so metabolically blessed that they can follow the same lifestyle and actually be thriving by it. We know that the majority of human food is utterly toxic to Zim, but then there were waffles, a literal stack of dessert and butter that pretends to be a breakfast…. Our guy was experiencing the “finally some good fucking food” meme from the first bite off that plate, but this can’t seriously be healthy,or if it is, then how?

Well, if I did sell you on the idea that much of their tissues and skeleton swaps out a chitin base where we would be using protein, there you go. Sugars for the building blocks to synthesize the connective/structural tissues for maintaining the body, and the bulk of the energy required to keep it running. And I won’t make the leap and suggest that’s all they have.

After all, the Irken equivalent of sandwiches do actually seem to contain “lettuce” and something that people will say looks like meat slices while not convincing me. I can get behind the thought of the natural or maybe original Irken diet to be a mix of plant matter and supplemental fungi, but everything I’ve put together implies that they are completely unfit for processing the goodies in animal flesh.

Overwhelmingly, I believe that the only time they possibly even seek out more sources of amino acids is going to be when they are smeets. That’s how it works in many wasp species. I.e. The growing larvae are the only ones that actually get to reap from the hard work of a colony hunting down enough protein to feed them with, yet the adults live out the rest of their lives more than content to gorge themselves on nectars and fruits exclusively!

And you even could put that aside, but you’ll have to grapple with the ungodly thing that happens every single time you see Zim touching a piece of meat. Would be awfully convenient to blame it on his personal brand of weirdness, or earth contaminants, but we remember this was a weakness that Tak approached fully aware of and expecting.

We know that polluted water can burn them. We know that beans and other foods can give them grotesque allergic reactions. Well what in the horrifying name of Resident Evil is this, though? Buddy pals, I think we got some unintended consequences of that bio-hacking on hand. Collagen and chitin aren’t just functionally similar to each other, they are practically analogous building blocks.

For a WILD science fact, consider that there’s a ton of ongoing research into the application of chitin and chitin-derivatives into having a role in tissue engineering, as a hypothetical scaffold in lab cultured meat, and as an effective wound dressing ingredient.

What we’re seeing with incidents like Dib throwing that Bologna at Zim could be an extreme form of the vise versa, because I know a certain protein that processed meat happens to be pretty high in :)))

Imagine the coupling of this with the bioengineered genome of Zim’s kind being so… reactive to a foreign intrusion, yet also flexible to modification. Maybe it is the acids, or some contaminant/seasoning on the meat that first damages the cuticle. That healing ability kicks in, but doesn’t stop where chitin does, readily binding to and with the collagens in these strange tissues that are sorta like an Irken’s but also just enough not like an Irken’s that it also kicks the immune system into overdrive. Think of all the pain and inflammation of a poison ivy rash but if the damn plant itself could also fuse itself with whatever you brushed against it. I think Zim actually had an understandable reason to be homicidally pissed off for that Bologna assault. Also how the Bologna virus was accelerated in Zim’s body. Once it had incorporated itself into his own DNA, it was game set and match with the speed and help those cells had to replicate themselves.

And uh, yeah, I think this post has gotten about as long as it reasonably should be here. I did have a couple more points I really wanted to get out of my brain about the Almighty Tallest, and I think that would be a good launching point actually for a possible (and hopefully final jfc) part three to this. Till then I got some off-topic scoliids to taxidermy 👀

#invader zim #iz fandom #irkens #xenobiology #iz #scarlet talks about things #long post #we hyperfixating #absolute ramblings i mean holy crap #cool bug facts #sci fi

[bogleech]

Sir Leech of the bog. What is a currently underrepresented bug in the cheap rubber bug set world you’d like to see more often?

I've already put thought into this before and have a top ten of arthropods I think should have been common in "generic" rubber bug selections:

Solifugid ("camel spider") for its unique look and viral popularity

Jumping spiders for being so widely loved. Rubber bugs still default to basically a nondescript tarantula or wolf spider every time.

Earwigs were literally the most common insect where I grew up and in many places still absolutely everywhere

Silverfish aren't as famous as roaches but still kind of a fundamental "house pest." Plus they've been made more famous by Minecraft, and you can just cast the whole bug in shiny metallic plastic.

House centipede for being another household bug people find super freaky

Ticks because they're highly common, scary and it might be beneficial if more kids knew what they actually look like

I actually used to see a pretty common set when I was a kid that included a mole cricket and a jerusalem cricket, both excellent choices, but I'd also nominate their cousin the camel cricket which a lot of people run into and find memorably freaky.

Scorpionfly, also pretty common in some parts, and just a really distinct looking creature

Bed bug, since they're an increasingly infamous real world threat once more, and because a rubber bed bug would look real nice in simple translucent red plastic

Isopod the absolute #1. Most common, most famous bug to find almost anywhere outside, there is absolutely no excuse for an isopod to have not already been standard in every bug toy set.

I left out anything I thought was too exotic, like obviously if it were just for me I'd pick out a bunch of obscure parasites and deep sea crustaceans nobody's heard of but I feel the low-cost high-volume rubber bug toys are meant to represent creatures at least some percentage of human children have a chance to encounter in their own backyard, depending on where they live, or have at least seen on TV.

[cnestus]

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is your job and degree? Getting into the field of entomology is a bit intimidating and I would appreciate any any advice.

i tend to be a little cagey about my exact job since my field is quite small and there's enough people following me that the chances of someone deciding to take offense to something and Get Weird at me are nonzero, but that's probably excessive paranoia on my part. then again beloved internet bug person mossworm got recently sacked from their job on account of weirdo online tattletales so maybe not.

anyway i can say i work for a government agency identifying insects from a pretty wide geographic range, looking for new exotic species and potential pests. during the busy season i spend most of my time processing huge volumes of raw trap samples, pulling out insect groups of interest, mostly woodboring beetles, for myself or one of the other entomologists in the lab to identify to species. during the off-season when we're not getting tons of new samples i get a little more free reign to work on other projects of my own design, so for example lately i've been working on my bee identification skills and am slowly putting together a large reference collection of native bee species that i reserved from years of insect trap by-catch.

i got my PHD in entomology without a specific career in mind but knowing i wanted to do something that wasn't just about developing products and methods for killing unwanted insects which seem like the main entomology jobs anyone wants to fund anymore. in a perfect world i'd love a entomological curation job in a museum but those positions are rare and in-demand and i didn't have the mental fortitude to do the kind of academic work in grad school to make me competitive for that field. but then i went ahead and got a job that lets me do some curatorial work anyway so i sort of won? my position is still at least on paper about controlling unwanted insects but in practice i rarely have to do much of that work, at least directly.

i get semi-regular requests for advice on getting a job as an entomologist and i often feel like i don't have much constructive or encouraging to say, since it's hard not to feel like it's one of the many disciplines being squeezed to death by the iron hand of capitalism. more and more positions in the government and academia are being cut or downsized by bureaucrats who don't see the benefit of taxonomy or any other research that doesn't directly result in their department or some corporation making a bunch of money. whole subdisciplines are dying out as the elder entomologists who were the sole sources of knowledge about them die off. there are entire groups of insects and other arthropods that are effectively impossible to identify to species now because the one taxonomic wizard who specialized on them died without having anyone to pass that knowledge onto. Donald Bright, the only living expert on bark beetles in the preposterously diverse and morphologically subtle genus Pityophthorus, died a few months ago without an heir that i'm aware of.

also most of the taxonomic research that is being done these days is all molecular systematics which i have Opinions about but this post is way too long already.

sorry. that was a bummer. i guess i'm proof that it is still possible to get a job like this today, even if i can't help but feel like it was mostly luck that got me here. plenty of the others in my academic cohort (that didn't burn out from grad school stress) also went on to get degrees in their field of study or at least adjacent to them. and again there are still plenty of entomology jobs in other sectors like agriculture, public health, nonprofits and NGOs and stuff like that. you also don't necessarily need an advanced degree in entomology for a lot of these, and a lot of people in the entomology field came in sideways through related disciplines like ecology, evolutionary science, general biology, or even things like viticulture and forensic science to name a couple examples from my own cohort.

looking back, that was mostly a lot of vague grumbling and not much concrete advice, but to be fair asking for "any advice" is a hard prompt to go off of so i tend to default to the kinds of grim thoughts that are usually rattling round in my brain. i may also be in an especially dour mood at the moment because even though my job isn't to my knowledge at any risk of being eliminated, my lab is currently being passively if not outright antagonized by higher-level bureaucrats for genuinely mysterious reasons and i will not elaborate on that any further for reasons i mentioned at the beginning. anyway! i am always happy to at least attempt to give more specific advice but i can't promise there won't be at least a little grumbling in that as well.

#entomology #long post

[cursedvibes]

Yorozu for the character thing.

Thank you for the ask! Especially the song part for her was really tricky, but interesting to think about.

favourite thing about them

I love how inventive she is. She grew up in a rural and likely poor region, she was born with a relatively weak cursed technique and she managed to claw her way up, so that even the Fujiwara wanted her in their service. All through her own ingenuity. She has an understanding of physics that's beyond her time. Also I just love her obsessive nature. You can tell that no matter if it's people or a topic she finds interesting, she'll cling to it until she has made it her own. That obsession is what got her into such a high position. Her love for battle and bloodshed is also refreshing. We don't see that that often with female characters, especially not combined with her insect armour that would be considered "ugly" and "too masculine".

least favourite thing about them

All the interesting things I listed above are only there as little mentions or titbits that are dropped here and there. We only get a glimpse of her inventiveness and the struggles she went through. Instead Gege chose to only focus on her obsession with Sukuna and make her especially pathetic through that. Like, if you're gonna drop such an interesting backstory, expand on it at least a little bit? Instead of going out of your way to make it seem like her character revolves entirely around Sukuna. She can have her obsession with him, that's fine, but Gege really did her a disservice there, despite obviously being capable of giving her more depth.

favourite line

"Even handsome men become crusty when dried out. Elegant beauty."

"I want it all to myself. Your solitude is mine and mine alone! The one who will kill you is me!"

"Toodle-loo, I'll be waiting"

brOTP

Hm, either the idea of Yorozu and Uraume very reluctantly getting along, kind of similar to Uraume and Kenjaku (she wanted to invite them to her wedding after all and likes their cooking) or Yorozu and Kenjaku. I think her research about insects and how emulate their qualities with cursed energy and her technique would be very interesting to Kenjaku. And since I hc that Kenjaku likes centipedes or arthropods in general, I'd like to see them nerd about insects.

OTP

Yorozu/Uro! I've ranted about them plenty before, but I'd just once again like to say that they are perfect for each other. Yorozu could've been such an inspiration for Takako back in the day, show her what she could be.

nOTP

Sukuna. I think they're both better off by just moving on and finding better people. Also I don't like this at all in a sexual way.

random headcanon

She has like a full mad scientist lair. Kind of an expansion on what we see in her first flashback. It's full of books and show cases of animals and makeshift terraria where she studies insects to improve her technique. I mean, she knows what an insect's nervous system looks like, she must've picked them apart very thoroughly, probably used her CT as assistance to invent microscopes and other tools that didn't exist back then. Also, the way her servant looks, I think she doesn't shy away from human experimentation either to test a new form of Construction for example.

unpopular opinion

She isn't actually sexually attracted to Sukuna. All she ever talks about is owning and controlling him. The marriage is for her to demonstrate her ownership over him and tie him to her. Even if it's merely his corpse. While I'm all for necrophillia, I don't think that's the intention here.

song i associate with them

I don't yet have a song where I think "yes, that's her!", but I chose IC3PEAK's Плак-Плак for her defying tradition and killing her husband and Red Sex (restrung version) just because I think it embodies her particular brand of insanity quite well, particularly how connected everything about her is to her body. From her being nude in the Heian era to her insect armor. Feels sort of suffocating just like her obsession and some of the strings remind me of the sounds of insect wings.

favourite picture of them

Always gonna be her studying nude by candle light

but also of course her insect armour

and her just looking cute/deranged in general

#asks #yorozu

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Sorry if u get this a lot but do u have a favorite type of fish or aquatic animal!!? Also if u have any funky abyssal or midnight zone animals/fish I’m super interested :))

My favourite fish are sturgeons! I have a lot of love for them, here’s a post I’ve made about them before, lest I go on a tangent about how perfect they are <3

But! I have other aquatic friends I love too! I love pikes, I love whale sharks, I love salmon and I love perches! I love pufferfish and I love rays like mantas and I love angel sharks and epaulette sharks and other bamboo sharks! And I love gars and I love eels like morays and the European eel and ribbon eels too! And I love wrasses like the cleaner wrasse, and I love parrotfish, and I love anglerfish, and I love kois and goldfish and it is my fantasy to one day own one very very big aquarium with goldfish or perhaps neon tetras or cardinal tetras because I love them too….

I also like non-fish aquatic animals though I discuss them less! I love whales and dolphins, I was a massive bottlenose dolphin fan when I was a tween and I still love all whales but baleen whales and orcas take the cake for me now! I love deep sea giant isopods, and I love diving beetles and diving bell spiders because they’re the most metal creatures ever, I love crayfish so so much and I love shrimp — I keep some Neocaridina davidii -shrimp! I love arthropods greatly and the reason I don’t specify “insects” or “crustaceans” or some other type even though some arthropods creep me out (it’s not their fault though <3) is because I just really like arthropods in general! Aquatic arthropods especially. Besides those I really love octopuses and squids and clams and I love aquatic birds like penguins and… aaahhh!!!! There’s just so many different little and big guys to love, you feel me? It’s hard to express how excited aquatic fauna makes me. I’m probably forgetting some notable ones as we speak!

I will try to make some deep sea fish facts anon! I can see they’re a big favourite among the crowd :)

#fish #asks #anonymous #anon #anonymous asks #aquatic

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

the really funny and depressing thing about the aggressive “so you kill animals that can love?” anon is like ???? so we’re building a ranking of animals based on how close they are to human concepts of love and the self?

the prioritization of mammalian (and sometimes bird) life in these arguments is fascinating and a little sad. bc you get some people arguing against buying fucking *wool* and then like. “Eat bugs” as a “viable alternative” (even tho human safe bugs are a novelty food in the us and therefore $$$ )

Bugs are living beings too!

Also I wonder if there will be a schism in the community in a few decades since recent research has suggested that plants can also feel pain 🤔

Sorry to bring up this concept in your inbox instead of Bird, was just making me think about veganism and the priority of “cute” animals that humans can sympathize with (in this case livestock)

There is also just the fact that arthropod nutrition is exceedingly limited. Exoskeletons are generally not digestible by humans, and dried insects have generally lost almost all of their usable nutrition. Mealworms for example are largely compared to potato chips in animal care circles, if you try to sustain even an insectivorous animal on them they will get bone problems and die or else become permanently disabled. Crickets are the most commonly used, and even they are gut-loaded and calcium coated before feeding. The actually nutritious bugs are not easily bred in captivity and cannot be effectively farmed, and I can tell you that I am not going to be digging for grubs and chasing cicadas every time I’m hungry.

[wyverewings]

Wyvere Reviews All the Monster Hunter Monsters (Arthropod Monsters)

If you know me, you know arthropods are one of my favorite groups of animals in the world. And of course, they're popular as monsters in media. So of course we have some bug monsters in Monster Hunter! We'll be covering multiple classes today, like we did with the last review.

Neopterons

We're starting off with the Neopterons, a class consisting of insect-like monsters. The first monster of note is Altaroth, an ant monster. I like those little crests on their heads, they kinda remind me of flowers, but what I really love is that they have bellies like honeypot ants! That's a wonderful touch of real world biology, which is always something I love with fictional monsters! 7/10

Tbh, the Konchu feels like they should belong in the Carapaceon class, seeing as how they have more similarities to crustaceans, especially pillbugs. Still pretty cool, 7/10.

The first of the big bug monsters is the Seltas Queen, who is obviously a bug queen. She's got traits of beetles and scorpions, but... kinda comes across as a sort of generic "bug queen" type monster? Idk what exactly it is, but I just don't enjoy the design too much. The tail is cool, at least. 6/10

Ahtal-Ka is a LOT cooler, and not just because they're a praying mantis with an Egyptian motif (though that is part of the appeal, of course). You see, they can create motherfucking mechas.

I AM NOT JOKING. LOOK AT THIS. IT IS CANON IN MONSTER HUNTER THAT THERE IS A SPECIES OF GIANT MANTIS INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO CRAFT GIANT MECHAS MADE OF SILK AND STONE, AND ALSO CONTROL THESE MECHAS FOR COMBAT. THIS OPENS SO MANY STORY POSSIBILITIES BUT FOR SOME REASON THEY ONLY APPEARED IN ONE GAME AND NEVER AGAIN. 8.5/10

Okay okay, I need to cool off from the mecha-making-mantis, and talk about another cool bug monster. The Temnocerans are supposed to be spiders, but Nerscylla here has six legs, which clearly means they're an insect! But they are still a cool bug monster, made more interesting due to the fact that they wear the skins of their prey. Creepy, yes, but the Hunters are guilty of that too. Also, I love spiders, even if this is a spider mimic instead of a true spider. 8/10

I know I've made the unofficial rule to not talk about the smaller monsters, but the Rachnoid and Pyrantula are just so cute, and also I like how Pyrantula looks like a little pumpkin! 7.5/10

I got a picture of Rakna-Kadaki's plush because it's kinda hard to read the features on the official render. Plus the plush is cute (actually the Monster Hunter plushies are cute in general, go look them up). Anyway, Rakna-Kadaki is a pretty cool monster too, with how they've wrapped themselves in silk and take inspiration from the Jorogumo of Japanese myth! 8/10

Carapaceons

Time for crab! Carapaceons are crustacean monsters, with most of them being specifically hermit crab monsters. Also, they have a habit of collecting monster bones, often to act as shells, which is pretty damn cool. The Ceanataur is a pretty good crab, I like their scythe-esque claws. 7.5/10

Shen Gaoren has some long legs almost like a spider crab, and also a nice coconut crab face. 7.5/10

I think my favorite of the crabs, though, would be Hermitaur. Like real world hermit crabs, they wear armor to protect their sensitive skin, but instead of shells, Hermitaur wears monster skulls! They also have a very spooky and badass face to go along with their creepy defense mechanism! 8/10

Bonus Flying Wyverns

In order to pad this review out and also get rid of the need to review even more monsters with the Flying Wyvern post, we're using some of the monsters of that class who are distinctly more similar to invertebrates. We're starting this bonus round with Khezu, and... well, they sure are a weird cave monster. They sure are creepy and offputting to look at, and that goal was definitely achieved. 5/10, they are a good design, but one that makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Gigginox, at least, is much easier on the eyes. They're more weird than overtly creepy, and they also feel more like a leech monster than Khezu. 7.5/10

Fortunately, we end on what is possibly one of my favorite monsters in the series! Astalos is a freaking beetle dragon, which I obviously adore, and merges those aspects absolutely wonderfully! They're such a gorgeous monster, and a perfect note to end this post on! 9/10!

#wyvere rambles #monster hunter #wyvere reviews monster hunter #bugs #spiders #ask to tag #that last one is for khezu and gigginox specifically

[tatters-the-bat]

Hi there!

Figured I should make a proper pinned message at some point.

I'm Tatters, your local fluffy flying fox! :3 Main fursona is the bat in question, secondary is a honeybee named Lore.

I go by she/they/it, and post all my art on here as well as reblogging stuff I like. Multifandom and my hyperfixations change often lol, my top fandoms are FNAF, Undertale/Deltarune, Pokemon, Crypt of the NecroDancer, MLP, Rain World, and Hollow Knight.

Big fan of small animals, especially bugs! (As such, trigger warning for bug and spider pictures, i usually tag them with #bugs and #spiders but i might miss 'em!)

If you like my work, following and/or reblogging helps a lot! I love getting comments on / asks about my stuff too!! :3 My comms are usually open. If you're interested or just want to support me, check out my Ko-Fi! Thanks for reading!

Tag Stuff:

#my art - My own artwork! - #oc art - For all my various original characters. Feel free to send in asks about any of them, I LOVE rambling about literally all of them!!!! - #fanart - For stuff I make that's based on existing properties. - #ship art - For any fandom shipping, I don't do it often but i love a choice few :3 - #art comms - Comm work I've done for other people! #my writing - Links to my fanfics and stuff. #text - Usually general rambles that may or may not mean anything. #bats - Bat pics I find/reblog! #bugs - Same but insects and arthropods in general! #aquatic - Anything related to water critters! All three also can include art I find of such! #cute art / #cool art - Reblogged art tags! I didn't have foresight when making the cute art tag that I would reblog art that isn't necessarily trying to be cute, so I just threw on "cool art" as a more generic one xD

#pinned post

[chocolatecatcupcakecheese]

MORE GET TO KNOW YOU QUESTIONS!!!

Any skills or things you really want to learn?

I see you're just learning to ride a bike, I also do not know how to ride a bike!! I picked up skateboarding during the pandemic (more specifically a long board) and I really haven't had time to practice or learn but I want to get back into it!! I have a permanent scar on my elbow now from my first time on it when I absolutely ate concrete, but I cherish it since I never did these kind of things as a kid. I also really want to learn how to play the guitar, I think people who can play an instrument are really cool (and also extremely hot). I think I might be tone death tho! I have a really hard time distinguishing notes, but I'd still love to try and learn!

Favorite (non pet) animal!! and why or what you love about them?

My favorite animal are octopuses!! I couldn't pick a specific species they're all so cool. I love how smart they are and I think they look incredible. I am very partial to aquatic wild life in general, I love me a water creature. My list of faves includes octopuses, sharks (whale shark and goblin shark especially), wild assortment of fish (coelacanths, chimaeras, and salmon are some specifics), axolotls, and frogs. My favorite non aquatic animals are snakes, insects (love beetles, mantises, and arthropods as some specifics), and rams/goats.

If you could have any superpower what would it be and why?

I wanna shapeshift. Something something queer and trans experience. I wanna be able to turn into a cat and do cat things, or a bird and do bird things, or a fish and do fish things. I think its only fair I get to half shift as well, let me have cat ears and a tail let me be a cat boy come on. I just think it would be so much fun being an animal or having animal features.

Any skills of things you really want to learn?

More than guitar, I want to learn to play violin and koto! I just think they are the sexiest sounding instruments. Unfortunately, I already know how to sing rather well, and any attempt to play an instrument has ended in failure as I get frustrated with my ability to make the sound with my mouth & inability to make the sound with my hands. I also want to learn to swim… Maybe the lessons will stick this time?

Favorite (non pet) animal!! and why or what you love about them?

I love penguins because they’re mean motherfuckers but look so cute. I love wild cats, especially Pallas cats because they’re mean motherfuckers but look so cute. I love sharks because they’re nice ocean dogs but look so mean (PSA: sharks are smooth). I love smiling fish like plecostomus and axolotls because they look like little happy guys and that makes me happy. I don’t like bugs but I’m fascinated by them (and rip past me who decided my animals > bugs tag should be “insects,” I feel bad each time I reblog an arachnid and am too lazy to change it). BASICALLY. It’s all about the 💞dichotomy💞 and snacks that smile back (legal disclaimer: joke)

If you could have any superpower what would it be and why?

I read Jumper by Steven Gould at a young and impressionable age. I want to teleport. I thought about invisibility for a while but given all the many methods of surveillance, it would be more difficult to escape undetected (which is whole the reason for that ability, to do crime, duh). Instead, if I could teleport, even with restrictions on the ability I could still find good ways to steal and escape. 😈

I have always known that my vice was avarice, for everything, and if I ever rationalized away and neutralized the reasons why not to, I would absolutely rob a bank one time for just enough money to get a house and live the rest of my life in peace with some interesting things. Big banks are FDIC ensured after all. Small businesses full of interesting little things are maybe not, and the art in galleries and museums is there for everyone to enjoy. I have always known how easy it would be for me (and anyone) to do villain activities, if I could but rationalize away my human empathy about it all and get away without repercussions. Stanford Prison or heist fiction, “what makes someone a villain” is always a fun thought experiment. But if organized religion in my youth did anything for me, it fostered empathy for all people and a fear of ephemeral spiritual repercussions which I can never entirely shake.

And I agree, really. I have enough things that I share them with any who need. I don’t need more things for myself. I just want enough things. At the end of the day avarice is just me attempting to shore up the fact that I feel (financially) unstable.

SO REALLY UHHHH ONE TELEPORTY BANK ROBBERY FOR ONE HOUSE AND LIFETIME FINANCIAL STABILITY WOULD BE UHHHHH (legal disclaimer: joke)

#akachan answers #babymoding

[foster-the-moths]

saw ur rb saying you dot mind ppl asking you questions to get to know you better, and since i am terrified of talking to ppl online (and other reasons i will not specify), what colors do you like? what are your interests (it can be of anything, media, hobbies, cool things you like to research abt, etc)? -imaginary anon (and if i have sent you an ask before, im coward anon w a different name just so you know). also sorry if this is just too much and if im being annoying and making you uncomfortable :(

YES THANK YOU i love all shades of red and also the shade of green they used for the ui of computers in the 70s. i have a lot of other colors i love but usually that depend on the context. as for interests uh. tmc obviously but i also love a lot of other internet horror series (i got into it with marble hornets when i was like. 13/14? and watched a bunch of other slenderverse series from there. i love amateur media so so much) recently ive been introduced to older horror stuff from the 70's that i havent had time to fully check out but i want to soon (deep red, suspiria, i have a whole list). honestly i love horror less for the scary stuff (i'm. not really scared of things i know are fake) but instead for the stories they tell i LOVE world building and character arcs in horror media its just so good. pokemon is a big interest for me as well, i love bug types. for things i like to research i have. a very long running special interest in insects and arthropods in general (since before i could speak LMAO) that has tapered off a little bit recently? for some reason? but i still love them. i have entire wikipedia articles and obscure websites of knowledge abt arthropods locked up in my brain. especially moths and harvestmen (<-if u don't know what a harvestman is u want to ask me abt them SO BAD). i also have entire drawers of dead insects i found and preserved (i do not kill my specimens, could not bring myself to do that, all the bugs i have were already dead) and i have some in there that i think are really cool (like several types of moths and what i believe is an Agapostemon/sweat bee!!! it is a metallic green bee. +many more). also cat coat genetics but only a little bit. also i love jigsaw puzzles and sudoku and solitaire. oh shit ALSO i have a big fascination with dreams and nightmares, mostly my own bc they are wild, but other people's dreams are also really cool, not dream analysis or deeper meanings just stories and weird shit. also DON'T WORRY i love getting asks (and also talking abt myself 💀) you're not being annoying or making me uncomfortable or anything youre fine 👍 (i. definitely get being very anxious abt being annoying though, so ALSO know that if you repeatedly ask "am i being annoying" that is ALSO not annoying to me.)

#feel free to ask me more questions i LOVE getting asks. it can be about literally anything not just tmc (although. i do love tmc asks) #asks #also hi imaginary anon thats a cool rebrand.

[ganymedesclock]

outta curiosity, why do you think the bugs are human-y sized? i've seen that portrayal fairly often in fandom, but it never occurred to me during my own playthrough b/c of things like the weapons all being things like "Nails" and "Needles" (plus Cloth's huge fang club) which feel... like they're supposed to /seem/ small, if that makes sense.

Kind of a complicated web of reasons, some in-universe, some out.

The first thing I’m going to say is that I agree with you in that there is something that “feels small” about Hollow Knight’s world. When a friend of mine, @betterbemeta played the game, they spoke a bit about a “microscopic aesthetic” that they chalked to things like the amount of detail in the backgrounds. At the size we’re used to seeing the world, dirt is just dirt. From an insect’s eye view, however, individual grains are visible to a much greater degree.

This very granular nature fills the world. Nothing has the anonymity of just being dirt- it’s all shells or fossils or bits of stone and sand and glass. Our relationship with the world is intimate. We are shown spaces and the vastness of them looms, daunts. So I don’t for a second resent the impression that the scale of the world “feels small”.

What does bug me, if you’ll pardon the pun, is trying to add humans into this world as some kind of vast upper limit. Because while they wield pins and needles, nails and shears... these are not scavenged objects. This is not Pikmin. The nail is called such, but it is never a nail as we would recognize, designed to be hammered into an object. The bugs of Hallownest mine materials, and forge them into shapes that are engineered and worked artistically. The Nailsmith has spent much of his life obsessively honing his craft.

It feels arrogant, when there is no human presence in the game, to automatically slot us in an imagined supergiant slot that would trivialize the game and everything narratively important about it. It feels even more arrogant to suggest an independent culture that never shows any evidence of being dependent on humans is whimsically plucking our door nails for funny little bug sword duels, rather than that they have a culture of forging and carving their own weapons, tailored to their needs, without “divine inspiration” from anything bigger than it except its gods, which are themselves entities not in the likeness or shape of humans.

For me, I feel like it operates much better to presume Hollow Knight’s world is comparable to Nausicaa’s- it is a land of giants, rather than a land of the diminutive. A world that, if we or creatures like us were walking them, we would walk alongside Ghost, these same roads and highways, and would have this same experience of being dwarfed by the vastness of the space. I feel like if you really want to imagine humans in this world, either explicitly or for a sense of scale- we’d be on the level of the setting’s bugfolk.

Another thing worth noting is that this world is also very alien. Far moreso than, say, Pikmin, a game that does feature tiny aliens on a post-apocalyptic earth, where we can recognize much of the world and its shape even if the creatures now inhabiting it are strange. In Hollow Knight, the world is strange in its beauty and savagery. It’s really not like ours. The larger things get, the weirder they get. There’s almost no indication of mammalian life, or even, besides the bug-people having some recognizable species among them like moths, butterflies, cicadas, bees- creatures that we recognize. God Tamer is either an ant or a cockroach most likely, but her steed was originally conceptualized as a lobster- and it is an eight-eyed, quadrupedal creature with a filter-feeder mouth, large horns, an expanding translucent dewlap and neither claws nor long tail to speak of, so Team Cherry has actively avoided putting “normal creatures” in there.

This setting has a particular logic about creatures. Everything is translated through that lens, so things we would recognize come out distinctly different, and the general thrust is ‘more like a bug’. So to me, that precludes the intrigue of humans, because we have what humans would look like, with concession made to these strange rules.

They’re the characters we already see and interact with.

I dislike the idea of towering humans, because to me, the sapient bugs of Hallownest so clearly are the humans. I feel like this is a world on a divergent planet. There’s no apes for humans to come from, or monkeys to grow into apes, or even mammals for monkeys to come from- everything is bugs, so the sapient creatures come from bugs. Quirrel, in the prequel comic, even briefly holds a much smaller crawling insect and muses how it and he have similar shells, and, yet, are fundamentally dissimilar creatures. Another narrative could very easily transcribe a similar moment between a human researcher and an orangutan he spots in the bushes.

So this compels me to, in crossover contexts, put the bugs as close to humans. I feel like this is a beautifully constructed and deeply alien world, and there’s so little to gain and so much to carelessly bulldoze by adding in a sense of scale that allows us to just ignore so much of the strangeness and force our own ordinary world over it. I don’t have this problem putting in other giant or strange forces in the setting- I’d be super up to colossal forests of giant trees as a level or scene in a fanwork, for example.

But I guess that’s what turns me off of a lot of things like the bug tank AUs- the humans’ presence and society feels like a way to not just put what’s familiar to us in there, but in such a way that invalidates the refreshing novelty of the world around it. There’s no stated upper limit to Radiance’s powers- there’s nothing she can’t infect merely because it’s too large. So putting her in a glass tank wouldn’t negate her. If it was that easy to stop her, PK wouldn’t be driven to desperation and have committed a staggering amount of esoteric sin on his own children trying to find a way. It immediately undermines character plots and motivations.

Suggesting that the bugs are living borrower-style among humans and making use of their technology, likewise, cheapens the plot of the Nailsmith and his obsession, one that is shared by many, or, in the Silksong demo, Forge-Daughter’s “ancient line and honored role”.

Now, I have seen borrower-style stories and loved them! I was massively obsessed with the movie 9 when it came out, which featured tiny cloth dolls (the largest of them could be held easily in one hand by a human) surviving in an apocalyptic wasteland, and they utilized pieces of human technology cobbled together into ingenious new forms. But the thing about Hollow Knight, is it is not that world. Some weapons are large, almost oversized for their wielders- but they were still built with those wielders in mind, by other bugs, using designs developed by bugs. 

Cloth’s club doesn’t really refute this by being a tooth broken from a larger creature, either- the temple of the black egg is made either from, or in the likeness of, the hollowed shell of a truly gargantuan creature.

This world has some very big things. I feel like thinking of humans as ‘the giants’ in this setting vastly underestimates the world. That somewhere in Cloth’s journey- and somewhere accessible to the kingdoms’ guards that became Husk Guards- there were vast cadavers with teeth that could be harvested is explained handily on its own by the idea that this is a world partially populated by giants- giants that play by the same lovely arthropod sensibilities of the more regular-sized denizens.

Another exciting thing worth noting is that there are ribs and spines all over this world! If these guys were truly on the scale of ordinary bugs, they wouldn’t need them- their exoskeletons would do all the supporting for them. But these guys are big enough to need at least vestigial endoskeletons. The implications of the remains that we see don’t exactly show us arm or leg bones, but rather intact limb exoskeletons. So these guys would have more complicated organs and more bones, that a bigger creature would need, but something the size of a realistic our-world ant would not.

#Hollow Knight #Silksong #readmore #thethrillof

[mothfishing]

Oh goodness I have so so so many favourites uhhh,,,ants also big cool vibe with you there. Moths, particularly tiger moths? Epic. Cockroaches and termites? Severely underrated. Dragonflies and damselflies? Wonderful. Antlions, particularly spoonwings? Epic. So so many spiders but particularly fishing spiders and jumping spiders (particularly in phidippus, maratus, and portia but also specifically bagheera kiplingi and salticus scenicus)? Super. (continued)

So so so so SO many kind of beetles but particularly fond of beetles in scarabidae (favourite is bumble flower beetle), HUGE fan of bees, cuckoo bumble bees freak me out as a concept but I think they're neat (prefer bumblebees outside that group though). I'm a mosquito apologist and particularly fond of elephant mosquitos (the mosquito I market as 'mosquitos for people who hate mosquitos). So many true bugs are so funky, I love lantern flies in particular. Grasshoppers? Epic. (Continued further)

Isopods? LOVE those, but you know what I love even more? Their myriapod lookalikes (pill millipedes). Also just myriapods in general, particularly millipedes. Earwigs get slandered SO bad and they DO NOT deserve it, earwig apologist here. Wasps are also neat, I like sawflies and velvet ants but parasitic wasps neat too. I'm a HUGE huge fan of aphids despite what a nuisance they are, I think wooly aphids look like fairies in certain angles. (Continued, should be my last one)

My favourite arachnids outside of spiders are book scorpions! Super fucking neato, highly recommend just Looking At Them. Friend shaped. I don't know much about crabs but I think they're very cute. Mantis shrimp also fucking rule. Also stonefly larvae are SUCH babies, I saw a video of one and it changed my life tbh. And that's about all on my head rn but like tbh I'm definitely forgetting some and I just. I love all arthropods. Gastropods cute. Worms besides earthworms are on thin ice though.

you have IMPECCABLE taste these are all INCREDIBLE bugs truly

ants are so cool i love how like, their behavior has such an effect on their environments that there’s a whole word just for species that have a positive relationship with them...tho of course several have negative or neutral relationships as well! i just think theyre so cool

you’re RIGHT termites and cockroaches are both so underappreciated...im less of a fan of cockroaches bc i do not want them inside -_- but i don’t hold it against them cause i don’t want most bugs inside...i love termites very much though. i just think they’re neat and i remember when i first read about them i thought it was so interesting how they have eusocial behavior but really differently from ants and bees and so on. (actually eusocial behavior is why i like ambrosia beetles, cause they’re the only eusocial beetle!)

YES excellent taste with dragon-/damselflies and antlions...

SPIDERS ARE SO GOOD...i wish i knew more abt them cause i like them too!! my faves are jumping spiders and peacock spiders...

yes yes yes yes bumble flower beetles are so pretty...i honestly love looking at videos of beetles just, walking around, something about how they move makes me go “hehe that’s just a little bug”. (though that’s my reaction to seeing a lot of bugs)

mosquitos are really cool...sometimes i think about their mouthparts and go =o and i’ll definitely have to read more about elephant mosquitos sometime too!! i don’t hate mosquitos but whenever i get bitten im like. you are a incredibly fascinating little creature. but also a very rude one 💔

yes yes yes true bugs and grasshoppers and millipedes and earwigs. also oh my god reading this made me remember i somehow forgot centipedes entirely which are like. not an insect but definitely a Big Fave Bug for me. i think theyre cute =)

i LOVE velvet ants and it’s soooo funny to me how theyre a type of wasp but theyre called ants. oh and i like fairyflies too!! which are...not a fly...but a wasp...very silly name indeed

LOVE aphids (as i said before, most of it is an extension of rlly liking some aphid species’ mutualism with ants but i also rlly like them in general too!!) and woolly aphids are SOOOO cute. if they were a little bigger, like mouse size, i’d want one as a pet...but that would be a nightmare pest i think hsdkhgdfhlghsdkf

I REALLY LIKE SCORPIONS...i just think theyre neat! as is everything else u listed this is a rlly good list

#moon's haunted #long post #Anonymous #asks

[mst3kproject]

The Strange World of Planet X

The Strange World of Planet X, also known as Cosmic Monsters, was released on a double bill with The Crawling Eye and stars Forrest Tucker of the same.  It’s got a giant spider and a deep-voiced 50’s narrator droning about the terrors of the atomic age, in a film so dry all my plants shriveled up and my contact lenses adhered to my eyeballs.

Mad Dr. Laird, with the help of his assistants Gil and Michele, is baking things in intense magnetic fields in order to rearrange the molecules and turn metal into putty – the general idea is that someday this will allow them to melt enemy planes right out from under their pilots. Would that melt the pilots, too? Gross.  At the same time and perhaps related, flying saucers are being sighted over Britain and a mysterious man named Mr. Smith is wandering around in the woods and getting worryingly chummy with local children.  After a lot of standing around and talking, Smith reveals that he is from outer space and has come to warn us that Laird’s magnetic fields are tearing apart the Earth’s ionosphere, letting in cosmic rays that will mutate humans into murderers and insects into giants!

Since my last ETNW was fairly well-paced and entertaining, the law of averages tells us that this one’s gonna be a real turd, and sure enough… remember all my griping about how Radar Secret Service was literally unwatchable, as in I could not force myself to keep looking at it?  The Strange World of Planet X is like that but with a British accent.  Most of it is just ugly gray people in ugly gray rooms, droning on about whatever at far greater length than necessary.  Everybody sounds like they’re reading their lines off cue cards, the photography was awful to begin with and the degraded print makes it really hard to tell what the hell is going on. Fuck this movie.

The film’s general insufferability is made all the worse because normally giant bug movies are among my favourite types of crappy old sci fi.  What could possibly be more fun than giant grasshoppers crawling all over postcards of Chicago?  If the bug bits were fun, that would go a long way towards saving this one, but of course, they’re terrible.  It’s mostly too dark to even see the giant insects, and when we do see them, they’re nothing but close-ups of live (and sometimes dead) roaches and grasshoppers.  Only a couple of shots even attempt to composite them in with live actors and those are so dark and blurry that it frankly wasn’t worth the effort.

The other main ‘effect’ in the movie is a couple of flying saucers.  These are unidentifiable white blobs when far away, and ridiculous tinfoil models dangling from strings up close.  The pie pans in Plan 9 from Outer Space are worse… but not by much.

What should be the most exciting part of the film is the battle in the woods between the soldiers and the giant bugs, but it’s mishandled in the same sort of way as the supposedly climactic fight in Invasion of the Neptune Men.  There’s no narrative or any characters we care about – just soldiers running around shooting at things.  Where are they?  How close are they to the town?  Are there civilians in peril?  We don’t know.  To be effective on screen, a battle needs a story.  The battle in Army of Darkness is about the need to protect the Necronomicon.  We can see the Deadites getting closer to the tower, as Ash pulls out more and more ridiculous secret weapons to keep them back.  The Strange World of Planet X is just random people and bugs, not even in the same shot.

There is some half-decent magnetosphere science in the movie, I guess.  The Earth’s magnetic field does protect us from the harsh radiation of outer space, although all the most harmful components of that come from the sun rather than from further afield, and such radiation can damage DNA.  This is why the ozone layer was such a big deal in the 80’s. This space radiation is much more likely to give bugs cancer than to make them grow huge, but in a movie I can handle that.  The really weird thing here is that, because they say it screens out the heaviest of the cosmic rays, they call the ionosphere the ‘heavyside layer’.  I would not have thought it possible that Cats could make less sense and yet here we are.

If you want some proper Crap Movie Science, there’s their explanation of how the monsters grew so big – mutations for size were able to pile up quickly because insects breed fast and therefore evolve fast.  I guess this makes more sense than individuals growing out of control as a result of whatever… but they appear to have applied it to a whole range of creatures regardless of their actual life cycles. Some insects do breed quickly, but quite a few of them have specific seasons and conditions for it.  This feels like a nitpick, though… I mean, by watching a giant bug movie I’ve already accepted that they can become huge so I should probably just shut up.

As an interesting note, Smith mentions that on his home planet there are giant dragonflies.  He doesn’t say how giant, though he implies they’re big enough to ride on. Firstly, man, I wanna ride a giant dragonfly!  Second, this tells us that Smith’s home planet has more oxygen in its atmosphere than Earth, because the reason insects can’t get bigger than they do is because they don’t actively breathe, but have to let oxygen diffuse into their tissues on its own (this is why there were six foot millipedes during the Carboniferous era — more oxygen in the air). The writers, sadly, do not seem to have known or cared about this, since Smith himself shows no signs of having to adjust to our atmosphere.  Missed opportunity there.

Since this is me, of course I’m gonna talk about how the movie treats women. Click the back button now. There are several female characters in The Strange World of Planet X, and while they're pretty bland they do manage to have conversations with each other about things besides men, and the honest impression I get is that the writers are trying really hard not to be assholes.  The first woman we meet is Michele, who has been assigned as Dr. Laird’s new computer operator after the previous one was electrocuted in a lab accident.  When he learns that the replacement is a woman, Laird complains about it loudly, protesting that ‘this is skilled work!’, and Gil gripes that female scientists are dour and unattractive.  Michele, of course, proves them both wrong – she is both brilliant and pretty, the latter mostly so that she can be Gil’s love interest but also at least in part to shatter the stereotype. It's thanks to movies like this setting the precedent that modern films are up to their eyeballs in hot but useless science women… but like I said, they tried.

The script is actually at great pains to emphasize that Michele is intelligent, educated, and the equal of any of the men, at least where science is concerned. Unfortunately, its way of going about it is to have them praise her for every little thing she says and does, to the point where it starts to sound awfully patronizing.  They call her ‘clever girl’ like she’s six years old and it frequently comes across as their complimenting her intelligence in order to deflect when she asks awkward questions.

Naturally there’s a love triangle in this movie.  It appears only to be immediately and peacefully resolved, and Gil’s rival for Michele’s affections is dead shortly thereafter. Why fucking bother?

A tad better-treated is Jane, the little girl fascinated by arthropods (she describes them as ‘bugs’, saying all insects are bugs, but not all bugs are insects.  While entomologically incorrect, this same definition of bug was used by David Attenborough in Micro Monsters, so I’m okay with it).  One of the reasons I think the writers were earnestly trying to be feminist is because they place a girl in this role rather than a boy.  Susan Redway isn’t any better than any of the other actors, but the character was definitely written by somebody who knew what appeals to children.  I love the bit where Jane promises to show her new teacher her favourite type of beetle, delightedly informing her, “they’re horrid-looking!”

The teacher, Miss Forsyth, is another attempt to buck a stereotype. Jane complains that she hated her previous teacher, who was appalled by her interest in crawly things.  Miss Forsythe makes a good first impression by encouraging her instead.  Again, this feels like the writers really were trying.  They want to say that the right thing to do here is to support Jane’s interests and ambitions, and someday perhaps she’ll be a talented entomologist, just as Michele is a computer whiz.

From a twenty-first century point of view, this makes for an odd contrast with one of the other notable features of how women are portrayed in this movie – they don’t come alone.  Adult women in The Strange World of Planet X must have a male partner, and if they don’t start out with one they will be assigned one! Michele pairs up with Gil, and Miss Forsythe accepts a date with the man who saved her from one of the mutants.  This second budding relationship has no effect on the story and indeed is never referenced again, it’s just there.  All the other women we meet are either dating or married… although now that I think of it this may be less sexist than it is a way to make a point of Dr. Laird’s single-minded obsession with his work. Everybody else, even scientists, has time to be a human being – but not him.

I should also discuss one more interesting tidbit offered by Smith. He says his people have been watching humanity and studying us basically since we invented ourselves, and they have never interfered before now.  Why now? Out of ‘enlightened self-interest’, he says – this is the closest humans have yet come to destroying ourselves, but it’s also the closest we’ve come to being a threat to our extraterrestrial observers.  One of Dr. Laird’s experiments, intended to destroy enemy planes, brought down a flying saucer instead!  The fact that Smith is willing to admit this suggests that he is extremely confident about the aliens’ ability to strike back if humanity should decided to start shooting down saucers on purpose.  The finale then bears this out… although it also left me thinking that the film could have ended very differently if only hacking had been a thing in the fifties!

So yet another instance of good ideas, unexplored and badly executed.  Also yet another black and white movie… what is that, six in a row?  Yikes.  See you in ten days, when I promise I will have something for you in colour.  It’ll be like slogging through the beginning of Season Eight and then finally arriving at The Giant Spider Invasion!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the strange world of planet x #cosmic monsters #fuck this movie #50s #tw: spiders #giant arthropod hours

[terminatedapathy]

Metamorphosis (Ovid Works) review

Finally, I’ve managed to finish a game in full, after several years of drowning myself in Transformers content.

....And this latest work won’t even be about robots, but insects. Whoops!

Either way, I have some Thoughts about this game. TL;DR I’m giving it a 2/5, reasons under the cut.

Game Synopsis: Metamorphosis, (very loosely) based on the book “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, follows Gregor Samsa as he is turned into a bug (we’re not given a species but presumably he is some kind of beetle, like literally every other npc), and is forced to go on a wild bureaucratic goose chase for his new employer.

Gameplay: Hands down the worst part of the game. It’s a first-person puzzle platformer, which admittedly can be done well as a genre (*gestures towards the Portal series*), but completely falls apart in this instance. Your character seems to lack a body besides having a camera for a face (and the two legs that occasionally appear in front of you), so platforms that you can land on are limited only to wherever you can manage to fit the camera. This is bad not only for giving the player a general sense of their ability to land a jump, but for also avoiding getting trapped in tight spaces that the player was never meant to get into in the first place.

I’ve run into too many glitches, too, it’s a little ridiculous. While playing it on the Switch, the game would freeze randomly during or after initiating dialogue with various characters. This would force me to close the game and then restart it from the menu. 

The puzzle aspect of the game, when it didn’t involve jumping puzzles, was actually rather satisfying. However, the environmental clutter and ability to climb on literally anything if you manage to find even the smallest ledge made solving some puzzles to be less fun if you had to search your environment for anything.

This section gets a 1.5/5. The game isn’t completely broken, but it gets close in some parts. Art: What little art there is happens to be genuinely appealing, I have to admit. The anthropomorphic bugs have a solid design, though their models could use a few more polygons. The two dimensional art (the bug insignia in the loading screen, the detailing on the menu screen) is gorgeous and I would love to have more of that kind of aesthetic throughout the game. 

The sound design is also well done, as is the voice acting for the bugs. The voice acting for the humans, meanwhile, is extremely flat. The humans are also incredibly hideous, and it’d be wonderful if we saw less of them, frankly.

I do have a few....critiques, regardless of this. For example, beetles being the only species that have a character model despite mentions (and 2D pictures) of other arthropods. I’m not sure if this was due to a time or budget constraint, but it was highly disappointing and left NPC diversity extremely lacking.

There’s also the matter of the inconsistency in which the beetles are bipedal or not? As far as I can tell, it’s never explained why some walk on two legs while others walk on six, nor why we never see some switching between these two states. 

Overall, a 3/5 for art. It’s hit or miss, and needs a little work regardless.

Story: Spoilers ahead! You have been warned!

...I say that, but what is there to spoil, really? This game barely has a plot despite its tone implying that there’s something much greater, much more mysterious going on. Gregor’s friend is arrested by some obviously fake police while Gregor is turned into a bug, and then has to talk to a bullshit lawyer and potentially be sentenced to death for a charge he doesn’t even know about. Gregor, meanwhile, travels through a series of mystical and physically impossible spaces as he encounters people in his same situation, seemingly being content to live in their bug society instead of dealing with the bureaucratic horseshit that the Tower forces people to go through in order to even get to the damn place. Somehow, this is all tied together, as the lawyer and fake police are obviously working for the Tower in come capacity.

Nothing gets explained, and we’re given no conclusion besides Gregor becoming human again by the end and then running into the same fake police. The Tower apparently deals in...illegal judicial practices? And forcing peoples’ friends to sign a paper to execute them? After turning them into beetles????

It’s sad, really. It seemed like it was going to go somewhere eventually, but it just stopped. If it were evident that this were only the first episode (as modern indie games are prone to doing), I’d be filled with anticipation, but as far as I’m aware Ovid Works seems to be done with this piece. A game like this leans heavily on its story, so it is with a heavy heart that I must acknowledge that the failure of this part has affected the quality of the experience considerably.

2/5. Interesting ideas brought up, but ultimately wasted potential.

Possible improvements: 

-less humans. Preferably no human models next time, as these ones were honestly more intimidatingly uncanny than the bugs could ever hope to be.

-greater bug NPC diversity. Please, I’m begging you, you can’t just put a moustache on a generic npc and call that enough of a distinction, give us other species.

-a plot that focuses on the bugs with an additional analysis on what it means to be one as opposed to human. And it better appreciate them too, goddamnit.

-a third person camera accompanied by an actual character model. Either that, or completely doing away with jumping puzzles

-flight mechanics? If not, then an explanation for why the characters can’t fly despite being beetles.

Final Thoughts:

Absolutely not worth $20+. I’d price it more around $10. I genuinely hope Ovid Works will improve in their next piece.

#he speaks #metamorphosis #ovid works

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Bug Type

Oh boy, it is indeed TIME for the finale of all these type reviews. Covering my absolute favorite type of them all: Bug!

I had always had a loving fascination with insects and arthropods since I was a young child. I'd not be shy to let them crawl on me so long as they weren't outright menacing like a particularly dangerous spider or some variety of ant with some mean chompers. I was THAT KID that caught caterpillars, fed them until they became butterflies, and then let them go. The kid that tried (and sadly failed) to keep an ant farm. I only kill bugs in my house that are being particularly invasive (and even then I always feel awful doing it); the rest I just escort outside. I don't care what any “whoa kill it with FIRE!!!!” kinda commenter says, spiders are pretty much welcome to stay in my room.

How sad is it that as I see it, one of the perks of having an outdoors day-job is I regularly get to make friends with insects?

Point is, bugs are good. They're good for the environment, and important to Pokemon's history itself. The man credited with creating Pokemon, Satoshi Tajiri, cited the major inspiration for Pokemon being his childhood memories of collecting bugs. OF COURSE bug would get its own dedicated element in this sort of RPG! As well as being one of the more populated types in the series.

It's just sad that it's not exactly THE most meta type out there. It's weak to a lot of types that are bad to be weak to like Fire, Rock, and Flying, but don't have much in the way of resistances or type advantages. The one real perk they have resistance-wise is blocking Fighting. They're at least good against some types that are handy to have a counter to. Either way, I pretty much CAN'T go a whole playthrough without picking up a bug buddy. It's impossible.

It also comes to light to me that, when you look over the whole roster of buggies like this, it turns out not one Bug is really designed to be “gross” or unappealing outright. I mean, I guess shed cicada skin can be uncomfortably crusty to the touch, but other than that, hmm. Nah, the closest we get is “arthropod menace” and that's about it. How do was have a COCKROACH Pokemon in the series at this point and the type is more or less squeaky clean as ever?! I guess I kinda do appreciate that Gamefreak rather legitimately celebrates insects as some really neat and fascinating creatures. Bugs aren't gross, they're cool! Bugs aren't nasty, they're neat! It's heartwarming to know a series as big as Pokemon sees insects and arthropods in more or less the same light as I do. Heck, I'm sure you could credit the series to warming up PLENTY of other people to be less squeamish toward bugs. Or at the very least think twice before they go squashing one that's minding its own business.

...That said, I wouldn't say no to them making more gross-looking bugs.

Top 10 Favorite Bug Types:

HNNNGH. This is too difficult. I can't. I gotta highlight more.

The Other Top Favorites:

There. My heart is a little more at peace now.

The Bottom 10 Least Favorite Bug Types:

Okay Fine

The 10 Bug Types I Wish Were A Little Bit Better:

Because the only Bugs in the whole type that just outright aren't my jam are Volbeat and Illumise, and that's it. The rest have just a little tidbit or two that I'd change or do a slight redesigning outright to get em to be up to par with other Bugs. Additional mention to Mega Heracross just because I'd almost rather Mega Heracross was its own, unique Pokemon instead of an alternate form of Heracross.

The Cutest:

Gen 5 is so good with adorable Bugs oh my goodness.

The Coolest:

The Prettiest:

The Spookiest:

...See what I mean? There is a CRIMINAL lack of spooky bugs in the Bug type!

Weirdest/Most Unique:

Shuckle is still a mystery.

Most Inventive Use of the Type:

How many times have I gushed about Shedinja's design throughout this whole review series? It's hard to make “the fact that it's a Bug” a real inventive thing by itself since it's a rather matter-of fact state of being for monsters like this. But these bunch in particular REALLY take advantage of their bughood and really show the designers at Gamefreak did their homework or just in general had some really neat ideas. Araquanid being a reverse of a real-life diving bell spider, a mosquito that sucks blood to increase its FLEXING capabilities, a cockroach that is a self-grooming neat freak just like real cockroaches are. Escavalier and Accelgor lumped together because of their specific interaction reflecting a real-life interaction between a beetle and its snail prey; albeit the ending is a little bit happier for this snail than in real life. Kricketune is a sadly unsung little stroke of minor genius in how a violin beetle gets to actually BE a violinist that plays its own violin body. Kricketune's just overshadowed by its own memey cry, sadly.

The Buggiest of them All:

I'm always perfectly fine with stylized body types when it comes to bugs, but I can also take a moment to appreciate the Bug types that are convincingly insectoid. Plus y’know. It helps when the odd bug type has the correct number of legs.

BUG TYPE WISH LIST:

NOTE: These Type Wishlists were written out before any news on new Pokemon from Sword and Shield. The Pokemon revealed over time will not affect these wishlists. Just to present them unaltered despite spoilers and in the interest of getting the wishlist out there, and to see which items on said wishlists get fulfilled by Sword and Shield!

[Inhale]

A Grasshopper/Cricket:

Despite their english names, Kricketot and Kricketune aren't actually crickets, but are actually moreso designed after beetles. So we've still yet to have any true orthoptera species of insect in Pokemon yet!! And that is a CRIME because Grasshoppers and Crickets are criminally underrated just because they're fairly common insects. God I could comprise of list of just some neat orthoptera I like. You could even kill two birds with one stone here by having an inter-species evolutionary line where a cricket evolves into a grasshopper!

Termites:

I'm still bummed Durant's evolutionary path is painfully underwhelming compared to actual ants. Where's like, the Queens?! And big-headed Majors?!? Either an expansion of Durant's current forms or a new set of Termite-mons would be really nice!

A Fly:

How weird is it that we've still yet to get a common house fly?! We technically have Cutiefly, but I'd love to see a more traditional-looking house fly. Or any other number of fly species if you're feeling adventurous!

A More Traditional Mosquito:

Buzzwole is absolute gold and I don't at all mind it, but I'm still feeling a bit of an itch (hah) for a more traditional looking mosquito. My first shot at making a mosquito monster in the form of my own Fakemon was incorporating the aquatic larval form as a scuba-diver that eventually evolves into a water-drinking and squirting big mosquito. MAINLY because I didn't think Gamefreak would ever even slightly elude to blood if they ever made a mosquitomon, yet here we are.

A Wheel Bug/Assassin Bug in general:

I just point out Wheel Bugs because they're easily my favorite kind of assassin bug, distinguished by the big gear-shaped hump on their back. But I'd love any assassin bug, really. Just look at their goofy faces.

A Giraffe Weevil:

I'm sure tons of people have seen pictures of this thing around the internet. And if you still haven't there it is. You will lay your eyes on this stupid thing and you will immediately understand why we needed a Giraffe Weevil Pokemon like, four generations ago.

A Bombardier Beetle:

While it may not look like much of the surface, this beetle is packing a venomous spray that it ejects from its abdomen to ward off predators! We could always use more Bug/Fire types, so why not pick this thing up and a flame-spewing or actual-bomb-chucking beetle!

A Dragonhead Caterpillar:

There is an irritating lack of insectoid dragons in the Pokedex that are actually classified as insects. You passed up DRAGONflies multiple times, guys! So fine, I guess I gotta pull out a more obscure wish; one of these bad boys! The Dragonhead Caterpillar is easily one of the sickest looking caterpillars out there, and totally befitting a Bug/Dragon type as is! The one sad thing about this is, like the antlions, it's another case where something's larval stage is a lot more neat looking than its adult form; for A Dragonhead Caterpillar would eventually become one of these:

...Yeah, while the Plain Nawab is pretty, its significantly less impressive looking than its caterpillar form, huh? Still no reason you couldn't just elect to give us a draconian butterfly while you're also at it! I guess I wouldn't be TOO upset even if an official Pokemon version of this bug wound up with a more fun base stage than its final stage.

Any Wooly Caterpillar:

I don't care which one you pick, a big ol fuzzy caterpillar is something CRIMINALLY missing from Pokemon at the moment!!

A Devil's Flower Mantis:

Mantids are some of the micro-world's coolest monsters. It's a shame then that the three mantid monsters in Pokemon so far are 1. A lizard with some mantis parts on, 2. More of a lobster, and 3. Not actually a mantis. And that sadly the latter means orchid mantids are out. While I'd be overjoyed to see any new mantis Pokemon, I think a Devil's Flower Mantis would be my personal go-to for a new mantis. It's just so god dang WICKED looking!

This Mind-Controlled Snail:

Because this thing has to be demonstrated in gif form to really portray the oddity of what's going on here. Although, the description is on the gross side, so here's a fair warning to skip past if you're squeamish.

This particular species of parasitic flatworm preys on snails. When they're eaten up by these unsuspecting mollusks, they'll soon find themselves getting their brain taken over by the pulsating worms that wriggle inside the snail's now-bloated eyestalks precisely to make the snail more enticing to birds to eat. Not only that, but the parasite also hijacks the snail's brain. Snails normally prefer damp and dark areas where they're relatively well-hidden away from any predators. These parasites force the snail into bright and wide-open areas like the tops of bushes specifically to make it as easy a meal as possible. They multiply in the bird's stomach before beginning the cycle anew when the bird, ahem, “drops” them off.

Obviously there's a lot of parallels to draw here from this and Parasect. But heck to it if I'd say no to a new, freaky mind-controlled hypno-snail. It'd be such a cool effect on an ingame model to see their eyes pulsating in color. You could even go ahead and make it a candidate for our first Bug/Psychic type!

A Stick Bug:

It's not super pressing that one gets in. I just think stick bugs are neat.

A Black Widow:

I know we got Ariados, but something feels missing from the spider roster in that we don't have a traditional creepy crawly-type spider. A Black Widow is about the most stereotypically creepy spider out there, but I'd love to see it for its potential either way.

A Peacock Spider:

One more spider while we're on the subject of spiders. And offset a spooky spider with a cute one! There's all sorts of fun takes to have on a peacock spiders.

A Pelican Spider:

No hold up. Wait a second. One more spider because I had literally discovered this thing as I was writing this very list. Look at this thing. Look at this spider. What the hell. What the actual hell. What is happening. What. I want one now.

APPARENTLY this Pelican Spider is a species of spider that specifically evolved to eat other spiders. Its weirdly long “neck” and extended mandibles are designed to keep its prey at a long length away from itself so they the spiders it catches can't retaliate with their own bites. That's so neat. I could see how you can intemperate that into a gameplay sense; make it specialize in biting moves and have an ability that makes all biting moves no longer make contact. Maybe that's not HUGE but.

A Dobsonfly:

Again, no pressing reason I can think of other than dobsonfly are underrated, and getting a nice Pokemon to go with em would be cool.

Gah, there's probably a good billion or so I could continue to think up but I SUPPOSE it's gotta stop at some point.

“How on Earth did we wind up with some internet person talking about insects for about half an hour's worth of reading?”

ANYWAY, that's the final of the type reviews. Sword and Shield are just two weeks away, believe it or not. It’ll be a while before I’m back into the funk of making reviews. As I’ve said before, I’d like to take a month or two to really absorb all the new Pokemon they have on offer. For a brief little preview-opinion, the new Pokemon are overall pretty dang good so far. There’s already a couple I’ll be excited to talk about, but if preview event-goers are to be believed, there's’ apparently a TON of new Pokemon to look forward to.

ANYWAY Future-talk:

I dunno if I’ll do something in the meantime review-wise. I would go back to look at the recently discovered Beta Pokemon from Red and Green and Gold and Silver, but I feel like I’ve not got a ton to add to that conversation in particular. (Literally the only hot take I can really come up with is the Baby Vulpix is kinda lame)

I MIGHT look into doing character design reviews for some non-Pokemon properties. I felt like it was eventually gonna happen at some point, I’m just not sure about it happening YET given SwSh are so close and once I’m ready for those reviews I’d have to put the non-Pokemon project on hold. Tell me what sorta series y’all would like to hear my thoughts on for character design. My personal biggest candidates are looking at the creatures from the Pikmin series, the various boss characters from all the various Mega Man games, and looking over the Champions from League of Legends, as well as reviewing the monster cards of Yu-Gi-Oh.

Mega Man would probably be the easiest. Robot Masters don’t exactly require deep analysis to critique their designs. (Though that wouldn’t stop me from getting rambly.) It wouldn’t be until the X, Zero, ZX, and Battle Network/Starforce series that the designs get crazy detailed.

YGO and Pikmin would be easy too, the only issue would be figuring out a format for what order to do them in.

League would easily be the hardest to do. Cause being the completionist that I am, I would want to cover EVERYTHING. Old versions of the characters, NEW versions, as well as every single skin. The problem is figuring out an order to put it all in. The easiest would just to do iit in alphabetical order and cover the skins of each champ as we come across them. But I’d ideally like to do everything in chronological order. Start with the first 40 champions and then pan out to cover each one in order of release, skins included. It’s just really difficult to find a consistent timeline on League content, especially for skins. I dunno. That’d be something I’d have to look into.

Either way, no matter what I end up going with, I’ll see you next time!

[Archive]

#Pokemon #bug type #The Bug Type #Pokemon Reviews