Est. Read Time: 30 min
Well, if this isn't an encouraging start to the year... publishing my first update - my JANUARY update - OVER A WEEK INTO FEBRUARY! Yup. Excellent start. (Do I get points for chipping away at it daily since January 30th?)
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I'll be honest. I hadn't thought of this blog or my New Year's Resolutions at all last month (minus the last two days because I was trying to make my January deadline). This is the main reason I'm still using Josefin Sans for the text font. I just couldn't find the energy to even begin to narrow down which font to permanently keep. As for writing itself, I only ever-so-briefly gave that any thought. Yup. This is an awesome start of a new year for a writer. Why am I STILL so burnt out!? (We'll get to that...)
Anyway, how about a quick refresher on the resolutions I came up with for 2024?
- Take another run at posting at least one blog update every month; 12 updates in total before the close of 2024.
- Read an average of 7.5hrs per month (that's the equivalent of 15min per day for a 30-day month)
- Write Plagg-centric stories for the two Friday 13ths this year: September and December
- Publish at least one narrative each quarter of the year: 4 stories total; once every 3 months.
How am I doing on those? Well...
1. I'm publishing January's post a third of the way into February. So, I'm clearly doing amazing with this goal already. I'll get more into the "why"s below. Regardless, I'm not letting that defeat me, and have been working on it steadily (albeit minimally) for the past 12 days. I'll consider that a little win.
2. I..... forgot to record how much I've read last month. I have no clue how close I got to this goal, but I can safely bet I wasn't close at all. I haven't read nearly as much as I would have liked. I've been so burnt out that I haven't even raced to instantly read the latest updates to those webcomics I started following (and excitedly talked about last post). It... it's been rough. This month hasn't been encouraging either given that I have barely cracked open any printed narratives a week into February... sooooooooo.... yeaaaaaaaah....
3. I have time for this one, but I have NO ideas on what the story plots would even be yet.
4. Head empty. No thoughts. No plots. I'm already fearful about hitting this "stretch-goal"....
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Hubby and I tried. We looked up a list of "20 good luck foods to eat at New Year's". We had at least half of them. We even stood on only our right foot at the strike of midnight so we could start 2024 off "on the right foot".
Maybe we overcorrected for 2023 and ended up jinxing ourselves????
To be fair, the year has at least been kinder to us than it has been for many others that we personally know. Unfortunate for us, that still resulted in adding a lot to our plates. For example, my poor manager ended up losing two loved ones within the same week, and then had a major health scare with one of her pets. She thought she was going to lose him too. Thankfully, he pulled through, but she still had to call off of work the next day to monitor him while he was recovering. So, I had a couple of work days where I was running the shop solo. Weeeeee.
One of those days was the highest sales day of the week. Of COURSE everyone decided to come buy the day I'm alone. Sheesh.
On top of that chaos, Manager was sick for the better part of a week (probably due to a weakened immune system brought on by the stress of all of the above). Then it was Biker Coworker - whom, from now on, shall be simply known as Chatty... because... boy howdy is she! - who was sick for the week. She kept saying "It's not covid! It's not the flu! It's just my annual sinus infection!" The frequency she stressed this though almost makes me question it.... And my throat has been a bit scratchy lately.... yay!
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On top of that, I got into a.... bit of a verbal battle with my General Manager a couple of weeks back. Argument over paychecks and how a sale's payout should be handled. This resulted in GM having to have A Talk with Manager. Said talk was during Manager's Hell Week, so she ended up UNLOADING. It was very much needed and I'm super proud of her. It ended up leaving us in a weird limbo with the GM for the rest of the month, though, and I think he's lowkey avoiding talking to any of us now....
Although, he HAS been a little heavy-handed with the "really appreciate you!" and "Good catch!" and "Keep up the good work!" and "This really helps, thank you so much!" emails this past week, so....
On top of all of that, the work projects keep piling up on my desk. Both figuratively and literally. Before I can complete one I have two more to sort through. When I left work last Saturday I literally had three different piles of projects organized by priority. Meanwhile, both of my coworkers' desks were virtually empty....
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If I don't already have enough going on at work, I'm also apparently an unofficial copyeditor for other companies. For two different manufacturers that our company works with, I've had to go through different marketing material. One was price cards for the current national sale. The other was the merchandizing catalog for customers to flip through. The price cards had multiple typographical errors (such as incorrect pricing) and formatting issues - such as a text box being too small so it bumped the last letter of a word onto the next line - that I had to sort out. I also needed confirmation on a few things.... things the manufacturer sales rep has YET to respond to me about, and it's been two weeks! For the catalog, there were pages that we just got last week that were printed in October and were depicting items that were discontinued in July.... so.... I needed to figure out what to do about those.... There was also a catalog page where the item identification number had a typo in it. If we looked up the item based on the catalog's ID number we wouldn't be able to find it in order to price it up. After confirming that it WAS a typo - as opposed to a new model that we didn't get pricing for yet - I had to break out a permanent marker to manually correct the ID on the catalog page. Real professional looking.
Then, for our OWN company, we use a marketing company to produce our advertisements. I don't know what the hold-up was, but they were a week behind in getting our sale price tags and promotional flyer to us. They prioritized posting the sale on our website first. Fine. I printed the flyer off of the website in order to know what items are on sale for the month. I noticed that one of the items pictured didn't have the proper description. I emailed the GM asking which was the error: the description or the product item? Turns out it was the description. I got one of those "Great catch! Thanks for the help!" emails from him before he emailed the marketing team to fix the flyer online ASAP. On top of that, GM didn't even know what I was talking about at first. He forwarded me the email the marketing team sent him with a proof of the email blast flyer, and the item was properly described there. So.... THAT was a thing....
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Guys (manufacturers). I am begging you. I already have enough on my plate. Could you maybe hire your own copyeditors (and/or get your acts together) so this is sorted out BEFORE it gets sent to your retailers? What are the other retailers doing when they get these messes? Do they have people in their stores catching these errors as well? Or are they just unknowingly running with them?
I haven't even mentioned the cranky, demanding, and entitled customers. The whirlwind customers who can't be bothered to listen to your answer to their last question before they jump into another one. The customers who need you to explain/demonstrate something 3x because they aren't paying attention to you despite specifically asking for that explanation/demonstration. The customers who are told they are already getting an item 40% off and STILL ask "can't you do anything better about the price?" The customers who can't make up their mind, so they buy a product, only to cancel the sale and buy another product, only to cancel THAT and buy the original product again, only to cancel AGAIN and buy something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what they came in for. The customers who are incredibly incorrect in the information they got from "researching on the internet" but are convinced that YOU are the uninformed one and/or you're simply trying to swindle them. The customers who "have spent a lot of money with this company" and so they feel you should just "throw in" $400 worth of items for free! The customers who specifically tell you that they do not want X, Y, or Z for the product they're looking for, so you avoid showing them items that include X, Y, or Z, and then they demand to know why you didn't show them those products - as if we're gatekeeping or something - and then COMPLAIN about how the product is DEFINITELY not something they'd buy when they try it out, how dare we show it to them! The customers who decide, four months after getting their item, that we clearly gave them the wrong item and we should correct this.
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When I get home my head officially turns off. There's just too much going on at work, and my brain taps out after that 8hr shift. I can't even really enjoy recreational things if it requires any semblance of brain power. I'm actually a touch grateful that Hubby hasn't started his D&D campaign back up yet. I have no clue how good at roleplaying I'd be right now. Ironic, since that's the limited amount of "writing" I've done in January. I'll explain in a bit.
But first! We need to power through a bit of an info-dump to properly set the stage. Join me as we sift through the drama that is
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As you could probably tell from my last update, I've been sucked down the NoPixel rabbit hole. More accurately, Hubby has. I'm just along for the ride. Mostly because it (a)allows me time with Hubby, and (b)requires virtually no mental effort on my part to enjoy.
While the main focus for us last year was on Ray__C and his character Raymond Romanov, the 4.0 launch brought back Sykkuno to NoPixel, and Hubby has been eating this content UP! There's an ongoing joke that Sykkuno himself has Main Character Energy (while still being humble and a little self-deprecating) and is protected by Plot Armor. This has resulted in the NoPixel running joke that Sykkuno's character Yuno Sykk is the "shadow leader" of Los Santos. Yuno's return to the server seems to prove that he truly is the Shadow Leader. He's already started, left, and joined at least four different "gangs" and has an apparent platonic harem.
My last post, I had introduced you all to Yuno's first gang "The Company". He was an original member and co-founder, but he pretty much did everything he could to not actually run it. While the other 5 founding members each had an executive branch they were in charge of - CEO, CFO, COO, etc - Yuno begged them to just let him have the humble title of "janitor" within The Company. We'll stick a pin in The Company for a beat as we move to Yuno's second "gang".
Fellow Company member Benji, played by Lysium, had a LOT of personal drama in the 3.0 era due to his messy love life. Because of this, Benji spent the in-universe five years between 3.0 and 4.0 to self-reflect. He decided to take a self-vow of celibacy. He wasn't going to let himself be messed up by carnal desires again. Benji and Yuno then met up with Tommy T., played by Zerkaa. Tommy had also decided to be celibate for 4.0. Add in Yuno, whom, much like Sykkuno himself, constantly claims that "girls aren't into me". Since a prominent gang in 3.0 was "Chang Gang" (aka CG), Yuno joked that they were the new CG: Celibate Gang. He then ran around the server recruiting any of his friends that also decided they weren't going to have any romance RP with their character, ergo the character would be celibate.
The main problem with Yuno co-founding Celibate Gang is that 4.0 somehow brought about "Yuno's Harem Arc". Sykkuno has always felt more comfortable having a bunch of female friends, and so Yuno likewise routinely hangs out with a bunch of female characters. He's also somehow both subtly and INCREDIBLY charismatic, so he's unintentionally wooing ladies left and right. But "Girls just aren't into me," so Yuno (and probably Sykkuno himself) has no clue these ladies have crushes on him. The main "totally not a love interest" is the character Lottie, played by MinksOfMars.
One of the big social "problems" of the 3.0 server was how easily characters could just adopt each other. It resulted in Yuno's 3.0 family tree turning into more of a family web.
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| Yuno Sykk's 3.0 family, as presented on the NoPixel wiki |
Now, it's been pared down DRASTICALLY for 4.0, but Yuno still has his twin sister Ray Mond, played by Valkyrae, his adopted older brother Gloryon, played by Garek, and his adopted younger sister Raia, played by LadyDima. Although, a new server rule that just went into affect in February limited everyone to just one adopted kid, so Yuno isn't allowed to call Gloryon or Raia his siblings anymore... it's a whole thing...
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Along with Yuno's adopted-but-no-longer-adopted siblings, Yuno is an adopted cousin to Lottie. Or... used to be? Lottie's adoptive mother is Yuno's adoptive mother's adoptive sister. So, since Yuno's and Lottie's mothers aren't allowed to be adoptive siblings anymore Yuno and Lottie may not be adoptive cousins anymore??? Like I said. It's a whole thing....
Regardless, back when people could still have adoptive siblings and Yuno and Lottie were cousins, neither Yuno nor Lottie knew their familial connection when they started hanging out. They just really clicked and instantly became besties. Then his friends started teasing that Yuno and Lottie were an item. The two sorted out that they were related, and so Yuno would correct everyone shipping him with Lottie, letting them know/reminding them that he and Lottie were related. To which, Lottie kept reminding everyone "not by blood".... For a while a LOT of people leaned into this joke. Even setting up a wedding for the two, much to Yuno's embarrassment and chagrin. Benji and Tommy T. were some of the biggest offenders, teasing that they had to kick Yuno out of Celibate Gang. Yuno would then counter by pointing out how much Benji was flirting with Ray Mond, and how HE was the one who should be kicked out of CG.
As of this writing, all three founding members of Celibate Gang are still holding strong, but they also all still tease each other (or, more accurately, tease Benji and Yuno) about having to be kicked out of the group.
Especially because Yuno's "harem" also includes Ray Mond's best friend Gigi Costello, played by AngelKnivez. Gigi hated Yuno at first, but instantly fell for him when he went out of his way to make up for a wrong against her (despite Yuno not really having anything to do with the griefing). His adopted sister Raia, despite already being married, also wants to monopolize Yuno's time in a manner that may not be strictly platonic/familial.... The "most eligible bachelorette" on the server also has a passing crush on Yuno. Finally, there are a few female co-workers throughout the many jobs that Yuno works that also seem to have at least minor crushes on him.
But, according to Yuno, "Girls just aren't into me". Uh huh. Sure. It's endearing that the poor man has no clue when someone is flirting with him. And he has no clue how smooth he actually is. I'd give examples, but when I did that to poor Aurora Morgen ne ended up having a novella's worth of info-dumping to sift through, and this is getting pretty hefty already. So I'll spare the rest of you. If you're truly interested, you can check out Sykkuno's VODs on YouTube, or peruse some of the highlights on Sykkuno's side channel: Daily Sprout Clips.
There were also two dating-related events hosted in-game. The first was a fundraiser where people offered to be auctioned off for a date with the winning bidder. The second was a dating game with a potential cash prize. For the auction, those being auctioned off for dates were given 10% of their winning bid. Because Yuno has Main Character Energy, Gigi convinced the hosts of the event to give Yuno an exclusive deal: he got half of his winning bid. Gigi knew it would convince the founding member of Celibate Gang to participate (his main focus is to get more money). He ended up being one of the highest-going dates, with his sister Raia winning the date after an intense bidding war for Yuno (a bidding war poor Gigi got outbid in right out the gate). As for the dating game, a bachelorette (the aforementioned "most eligible bachelorette" who had a crush on Yuno) held a series of quick games and challenges to narrow a pool of contestants down to one. Then they would have to decide if they would split the $5k cash prize or if they would try to steal the whole amount from the other. Through a series of Plot Armor-infused events that I won't get into here, Yuno did end up as the winning contestant. The bachelorette sniped the money from him in the end, but watching him somehow sneak his way through the game was quite funny.
For those interested in killing about 20 to 30min each, here is the video compilation of the winning auction bid for Yuno, and here is one for the dating game.
So, as Yuno is going through his "harem arc" and is joking around with CG, he's also struggling to find traction in The Company. It feels like more drama than it's worth as 6 strong personalities clash against each other and half of their days are spent having meetings. Meetings that bore Sykkuno and that he feared were poor content for his streams anyway. On top of all of that, it was the actions of The Company - without Yuno's involvement - that caused Gigi to be mad at Yuno in the first place, because 98% of the drama on the server is simply due to miscommunication. The whole thing was starting to crumble around Yuno and it wasn't the healthiest environment.
Meanwhile, his in-game best friend and former gang leader Lang Buddha, played by Buddha, discreetly created his own gang, unofficially called OldBois; spiritual successor to his 3.0 gang Cleanbois, which itself was a spiritual successor to his 2.0 gang Leanbois. Yuno fairly quickly jumped ship on The Company and joined OldBois instead. Then, completely unrelated to Yuno (maybe a liiiiiiittle related to Yuno?) The Company and OldBois went to war with each other. It was actually pretty funny to see the extent The Company members went to in order to keep Yuno out of the war and to avoid being aggressive towards him despite Yuno technically being part of the opposing gang.
Plot Armor.
The final "gang" Yuno is a part of? Well, as I mentioned, he does a lot of different jobs to grind out money. His main job is Gruppe 6 aka G6. Basically a NoPixel/GTA parody of those Brink's security trucks for money transfers. Due to the nature of the job, and the fact that most non-cop characters on the server didn't have access to guns yet - including the G6 workers, ironically - G6 workers get robbed pretty frequently. On January 30th, Yuno was doing a job and was the victim of one such robbery. Later that same day, while doing another G6 run, he became involved in a full-on brawl between three or four G6 trucks - with roughly 3 workers each - and a gang of at least 6 robbers. Roughly half of the Gruppe 6 workers were downed and the robbers ended up getting away. All the while, despite 9 different G6 workers calling in-game 911, not a single cop responded. We later found out that they were all busy trying to stop the bombing of a prominent city business. At the time, though? The lack of cop presence to protect the workers, combined with the G6 workers not hesitating to come to each others' aid, sparked Yuno's desire to keep his coworkers safe. For his next job, Yuno teamed up with Raia, her husband Jason, played by Nmplol, and their roommate Clayton, played by Boruleum. They also called up Lottie for extra backup. Yuno, as a joke, convinced the team to don his signature cat-ear motorcycle helmet and glowing shoes, each in a different color, that way they would look like the Power Rangers. They dubbed themselves the "G6 Rangers".
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| L-R: Jason as the Pink Ranger, Raia as Purple Ranger,
Yuno as White Ranger, Clayton as the Red Ranger (Leader), and Lottie as Green Ranger |
My favorite part of that picture is that Yuno is the only one looking at the camera and he wasn't even the one who took the picture. Raia was.
The G6 Rangers' mission was to do all they could to keep their coworkers safe, and to promise to come to any G6 worker's aid. As the group did their run they actually did manage to scare away some would-be robbers, which inspired more G6 workers. Within 24hrs there were already G6 Ranger impersonators and G6 workers who wished to officially join The Rangers. Within three days, there were 22 official members of the G6 Rangers! The cat-ears motorcycle helmet and glowing shoes are included as an official G6 Ranger uniform within the Gruppe 6 employee handbook! And Yuno/Sykkuno only created them as a passing joke!
Main Character Energy.
OK, so, what's my point with info-dumping all of this about Yuno and NoPixel? Well, we've circled back to what I said about the limited "writing" I did in January and the irony of it being RPG-based given how I'm probably too burnt out to play D&D.
The more that Hubby and I watch the NoPixel content - mostly via Sykkuno's VODs, but also sometimes catching Ray__C's or MinksOfMars's streams - and the more miscommunication there is between characters, the more I think of what I would have said to try to clear things up a bit (but not SO much as to kill the content).
In January, I found myself fantasizing about joining NoPixel and interacting with these characters. Being part of these storylines somehow. It was almost a PAINFUL amount of fantasizing. I seriously had to take a step back and not watch as much of NoPixel with Hubby. It was getting a bit... unhealthy... the amount of time I spent fantasizing and how pained I felt when I realized the minuscule likelihood of me not only getting onto the server but also running into these characters with any sort of regularity... like I said, I had to take a mental break from this obsession.
Before I did though? Well, I can't fantasize about playing on NoPixel if I don't have a character, right? I mean I COULD just picture a self-insert character, but I don't know if I'd want to do something like that in an RPG. I'd want to run a CHARACTER; not MYSELF. What character would I play on NoPixel though?
I debated bringing in manic arsonist and psychopath/sociopath (? I'm still not sure which one she is) Trish "Lighter" Morrison. She's proooooobably not the greatest option for a starter character, though. Trying to sort out how to even play the game and create connections while cursing up a storm, dropping f-bombs (which is totally out of character for *ME*) every other sentence, and being as destructive as possible..... it would be A LOT. I don't know if it would even bring me the sort of attention I would want as Trish. I'm sure it would bring in both the hardcore fans and the vicious haters, and I don't have the skin for the haters. Not yet, at least. I also don't know if I would be able to build the character connections I would want to establish for myself on the server. Ignoring all of that, I have no clue if I would even be able to do Trish justice if she was my first character out-the-gate. I mean.... how do you even DO arson in GTA???
I then debated importing Jolene. She'd be a great fit. Sexy. Slinky. Sneaky. Manipulative. Constant flirt. Man eater. Seductress. Cat burglar. Her backstory has her constantly run out of town once her prostitution and thievery is noticed by enough people, so there's my reason for her to be new to Los Santos: running from wherever the hell she was last. Her personality means it should be relatively easy for her to make connections with a bunch of people. Perfect!
Except.... April Fooze, played by Fuslie, is already RIGHT. THERE!
"Siren"
Song by April Fooze (Fuslie),
feat Ryan King and Hubcap Jones
April's also just the character that I'm most familiar with. She's a full-on trope on NoPixel: man-eater manipulators that make money via Sugar Daddies. Jolene would just be another dime-a-dozen. Probably not the best option. Plus, I never remember how I spell her damn last name. So I'd have to either (a)keep a reference sheet on me, (b)constantly look at my character's ID, or (c)accept that I'd be misspelling her last name all the time....
OK, so Jolene's out.
Willow's essentially Jolene-Lite, but with super powers. So, without her powers, I don't know if she'd be able to get around the same issue I was mentally having with placing Jolene in Los Santos. She's out. Lia is just a meeker self-insert of me once you take her powers away. So she's out. Amara is anti-social, so probably not the best choice for a starter character. Plus, I'm White. I don't know if I'd feel comfortable playing a mixed-race character with internalized racism towards both of her heritages because they each traumatized her one way or another. Also... survivor of massive physical abuse....
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Yeeeeeaaaaaah... let's avoid Amara for NoPixel.... Probably best to keep her in the safety of my own private playgroup until I can sort her out more. And if I do ever officially write out Amara's story, you know for SURE that I'll be going through a plethora of sensitivity readers before posting anything publicly.
Moving on! How about my info broker Maggie (aka Magpie) from Scum & Villainy? Again, I don't really know the game's mechanics well enough nor would I have the connections needed to actually GET the secret info to broker. At least, not at first. I COULD still use her in my mental exercise of building a NoPixel character; trust that in my mental mock-up I could succeed in gathering important info. The character Gigi Gambino (different from the one referenced above), played by GEEGA, was able to essentially do what I was picturing for Maggie. Namely, just sit and patiently people-watch to get the tea. Too many characters are "loud" about what criminal activities they're trying to do or what their drama is. Add in some Yuno-like charm where Maggie tries to be friends with everyone, and: boom. Info broker.
However, I have two issues: (1)Gigi is already doing more-or-less what I would try to do, and she has more practice at it, so she's going to be more skilled. Why would characters come to Maggie instead of Gigi? (2)If I'm playing through these mental scenarios under the guise of prepping myself for it to come true - manifest it - then I'll have to accept that maybe Maggie CAN'T be a good info broker. I mean, it's largely dependent on my OWN skills.
One of the main downsides of this style of roleplay, as opposed to my normal stats-driven RPGs, is that dependence on my own, actual, IRL skills. When I'm playing D&D or Scum & Villainy or Blades in the Dark or whatever, I don't have to be skilled at, say, lock-picking for my character to be a master at breaking-and-entering. I don't have to be a good musician for my character to move people to tears with their song. My own personal charisma won't help nor hinder my character's attempts at selling snake oil. I have a stat. I tell the game master what I'm planning to do. I roll the stat. If I roll high enough I'll succeed. If I roll too low I fail. Easy. For NoPixel, however, my character is only as skilled and gifted as I am. I could have plans for Jolene to be a master seductress and cat burglar, but what happens if my charisma fails her seduction attempts? What if I personally suck at anything dealing with the various crime mechanics in-game? What if I'm not as sneaky as I'm mentally picturing Maggie? What if people don't open up to her as much as I need them to? What if no one cares about the information she gathers, or she's late to the party and everyone already knows?
If I magic my way onto the server with these character tasks in mind, and I suck at them - at least, at first - what do I have to fall back on for my character until I can get her to where I envision her?
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So, there goes most of my established characters. It would probably be safest to think of a brand new character for GTA anyway. One that could grow and evolve with my gameplay, instead of trying to import a character and HOPE I could be skilled enough to do my character justice. What would I do for a new character though?
Head empty. Remember? Nothing but rattling going on up there. And I'm now tasking myself to come up with a NEW character!? For a game I have no clue if I'll ever play???
But try I did. First up: a name. I did that with Jolene, and her whole personality grew from her name. Maybe it could work for this hypothetical character too. But, what do I even use for a name?
There are a fair amount of characters with pun/joke names on the server. Such as Ash Ketchup played by Ash, Penelope "Penny" Farthing played by raine, and Whippy's two characters Irwin Dundee and Crocodile Steve (if you can't tell, Whippy's Australian). You also have a lot of streamers - especially within Sykkuno's circle - that just do a nod to their streamer name. Sykkuno himself created an Asian character (so the family name is technically first) named Yuno Sykk; said correctly, his name is Sykk Yuno.... April Fooze is played by Fuslie, whose streamer name is sometimes shorted to Fooze. Ray__C plays Raymond Romanov and Raycardo Flick. Buddha plays Lang Buddha. Valkyrae plays Ray Mond. New player Ellum, after two failed character attempts, ended up landing on Eli Lum. Prominent player Ssaab had the characters Al Saab and Sam Baas. Former Cleanboi and current OldBoi member Tony Corleone is played by AnthonyZ.
You get the idea.
I'm not the greatest at pun names, but I COULD maybe do a play on my online handle!
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Who's ready for some lore drop?
While it's not the reason I had originally included it into my handle, "Lyco" could be a reference to wolves. I am also routinely describing myself as a Mama Wolf and do have a bit of a penchant for the pack animal. I also included "Rogue" in my handle for two reasons: (1)it is my favorite D&D class. I have such a love/hate relationship with the Rogue class mainly because of how diverse the class is. It is the Communications Degree of D&D classes. You can be a Rogue and then make your character be just about anything you want. It's amazing. But also a bit overwhelming if you don't know which direction to take your character... hence the "hate" part of the relationship I have with the class. My second reason for adding in "Rogue"? (2)Rogue is my favorite X-Men. Well... she's kind of tied with Wolverine, but over the years I've definitely leaned more into Rogue. And that TOTALLY has NOTHING to do with Hubby's favorite X-Men being Gambit.....
Point being, while Rogue exclusively goes by her nickname, she DOES have a canonically-known birth-name: Anna Marie. Coincidentally enough, in the Bryan Singer X-Men live-action trilogy, Rogue was played by Anna Paquin. So, if I were to name my hypothetical NoPixel character after my online handle, and therefore after Rogue from X-Men, she'd be Anna Marie. Even if I went an extra layer deep and used the actress's name, it would still be Anna. Alternatively, I could go with the original voice of Rogue for me. In other words, her voice actress from The Animated Series: Lenore Zann. I think I'd be more likely to respond to Anna Marie than Lenore, though... So that locks "Anna Marie" in. I would just struggle to not accidentally say my name was "Anna Maria" since I've already mentally made that mistake. Or... do I lean into it and change it to Anna-Maria instead of just Anna Marie??? Either way, I'd probably make sure to hyphenate her first name. Then you add in that wolf reference and, boom!
Anna-Marie Wolffe.
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| Generated by Bitmoji |
Man, if only I could get onto the NoPixel character creator to just generate Anna-Marie, even if I wouldn't be able to actually play her. It would be so cool to see what she might look like if I could make it onto the server. Just get that visual so I could have a proper mental image. The best I had access to, though, was good ol' Hero Forge. It may not be the NoPixel/GTA model, but it's also not too shabby of a recreation of my Bitmoji self. Right?
Maneuvering the braid so it would go over her shoulder was tricky, but I like how it turned out. Also, a rose-wrapped sword was my wedding motif, so the second I saw that it was a shirt detail option I knew that I HAD to include it! Not to say that I could create this outfit at all in NoPixel, but it was still fun to try to generate my Bitmoji Me on Hero Forge. Give me some sort of mental image of what Anna-Marie could look like in GTA.
The more I look at the side-by-side the happier I am with my end result. It was a fun way to fill some of my "brain empty" time.
I also played with the idea of adding Rogue's signature white-bangs. It's fun, but probably not a feature I'd keep. What do you guys think? Hypothetical yay? Nay? Add it specifically for Anna-Marie to make her a bit more distinct from my LycoRogue Bitmoji self (to make her less self-insert-y)?
I still don't know much about Anna-Marie. I started up a few character-building questionnaires, but... "Head Empty" and all that. So, I didn't get terribly far in any of them yet. Maybe that will be one of the things I work on for the rest of February.
In the meantime, the bits I have at least semi-figured out are as follows.
- I think I'd have her be roughly my age IRL. Perhaps a touch younger.
- I'd probably lean into the Wolffe last name and have her be a Mama Wolf on the server. Maybe even see if I could convince people to just straight up refer to her as Mama Wolffe.
- She'd be part-Yuno: friendly with just about everyone on the server; trying to make connections; trying to build up her "pack". She'd also be part-Raymond Romanov: viciously protective of said pack; her found family. She'd also probably be part Gigi Gambino: sneaky and discreet info-gatherer.
- If you hurt someone she cared about she wouldn't overtly retaliate like Raymond. I am not nearly good enough with aiming (in games or otherwise) to attack the way Raymond would. Therefore Anna-Marie wouldn't be terribly skilled at personally physically retaliating (at least, not at first). Instead, Anna-Marie would find sly ways to hit you where it hurts, or just persuade you into making up for the slight. She'd probably be a bit like Mickey Sinclaire, played by Blau, in that regard.
- I don't know enough of her backstory yet to know why, but Anna-Marie, much like most of Los Santos, moved to the island city in an attempt to start anew. She felt like it was time for a change in her life, and she saw opportunity in the rebuilding of this once-great city (assuming my mental roleplaying is happening this first year of the server, when everything is still new and building).
- She has no intentions of participating in criminal activity (not that she couldn't be persuaded/corrupted into doing them eventually). She has no qualms, however, at being "criminal adjacent". Being "in the know" and being a look-out or whatever, but purposefully tries to keep herself the clean face for any criminal friends/found-family she may make in Los Santos. A way to casually chat with the cops and maybe try to throw the scent off of her friends.
- Her main goal in Los Santos would be to earn enough money to get a nice, large house that people can just crash at. If you need a place to stay and shelter in, you find Mama Wolffe. She is Sanctuary.
- 7b. My personal "main goal", if I ever were to truly make it onto the server, would be to interact with Raymond Romanov in such a way that Ray__C nearly breaks character as he does his classic "No way!" yell at his chat as he walks away from his desk. If I could interact with this man and garner this sort of response, I will consider it a Bucket List item checked off.
....
Maybe that's what I should aim to do for my 40th. I've got 5 months to find a way to set up a gaming PC, purchase and play some GTA V Online to get used to the gameplay, apply to NoPixel, get approved, bring in Anna-Marie, meet up with Raymond Romanov, and get him to crack. Think I could do it?
(Probably not with my current chaotic scheduling.....) - She'd probably excitedly try to sign up to be a G6 Ranger.....
- She'd probably try to stick to the "Blue and Yellow/Gold" color scheme I have going for my LycoRogue persona.
Aaaaaand that's all I have right now. It will be interesting to see what kind of backstory and/or personality I can come up with for her. I'll have to touch base with you fine folks later about that.
While I was on Hero Forge anyway, working on building Anna-Marie, I got the itch to use the site to come up with minis for some of my other OCs. Some of them are still works in progress. The more features the site adds in the closer I can get to making these characters how I actually picture them.
First up was my black panther Tabaxi Emerald Gaze.
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| My Hero Forge recreation of the drawing I did of Emerald Gaze back in 2019. |
I wish I could give EG rounder cheeks and make her a bit more muscular. Her variant of black panther is designed off of a jaguar, which are chunkier bois than their leopard counterpart. I'm also not sure I like how shaggy the fur on her forearms and hands are when the rest of her body is short-hair. But, for what I had to work with, I'm happy with how faithful I was able to keep the design.
Next up is my eccentric theater nerd... I mean bard: Bronze Dragonborn Myastan Kriv.
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| My Hero Forge design of Kriv vs the official D&D 5e image of a Bronze Dragon |
I tried to recreate elements of a Bronze Dragon within my boy. I was able to find a beaked dragonborn head. Unfortunately, it had spikes down the back of the skull instead of smooth like the other dragonborn head options. I also couldn't give Kriv the Bronze Dragon boney finned cheeks, but I was able to find finned ears with little spikes at the end of them. I tried dropping the ears down enough to look more like the finned cheeks of the dragon. I think I'm close, but I feel like it needs tweaking still. I also couldn't add the fin down the back of his head and neck, so I gave him a green mohawk instead. Canonically, he does have the fin though. I was able to use the bronze metal coloring for Kriv's skin tone. I then added tiger stripes and colored them green to match the dragon. You can't really see here, but I also made his chest and palms that lighter silvery color the dragon has on its neck, chest, and belly. Kriv also has the dragon's green eyes and black horns on the crown of his head.
Kriv probably needs the most tweaking, given the limited selections I had for him, but I'm still proud of what I was able to build in the meantime.
My final D&D character would be good old Jolene.
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| My attempt at recreating my OG inspirational image of Jolene.
Original image is a character design by Grafit Studio for an undisclosed Game Insight! game. I doctored Grafit Studio's image to give Jolene purple hair and eyes. |
Poor Jolene looks like she's 10yrs older in my Hero Forge version. Oh well. Grafit Studio's version is just Jolene in her 20s while Hero Forge Jolene is pushing 40.... Posing her to match her pose in the Grafit Studio image was soooooo tricky, but I think I did a pretty decent job.
Side Note: back when I first grabbed Grafit Studio's image and doctored it to be my visualization of Jolene, I had found it on Pinterest. I didn't bother to backtrack the image to the artist at the time. Dumb move. Bad form. I knew I needed to track down who actually drew the original art and at least link back to them. It kept me AAAAAAGES to track the image down! It was a TRIAL, but I managed it! I'm so glad to be able to now link back to the studio, at least, if not the actual artist.
Anyway, back to my Hero Forge depictions of Jolene. In truth, I can't really have Jolene without also showcasing her possessed version, so here's poor Jolene possessed by the Prime Evil Deception.
Canonically, she was terrified and tried to pretend nothing was wrong with her (only feeding Deception further.... not the smartest move on her part). It's more fun, though, to pretend her possession also started to turn her evil. More compelling imagery that way. Also, I couldn't showcase that Jolene's tongue became forked and snake-like. So... pretend that's there too.
I started working on building Trish from the X-Future canon, along with Hubby's character Chayse. I haven't perfected them yet, but here's some starter images of them.
Clearly, I am doing some important writing work here....
Anyway, that's what limited "writing" progress I've done in January. And... the first week of February, I guess.
Considering how long it kept me to write this update, I guess I better stop here so I have time to get started on the next one. Hope to see you a second time this month! Until then!
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| Generated by Bitmoji |
