gotta popkas

Stream incoming! We're going back to Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth because we never finished it. There's postgame stuff we could be doing in Next Order but we wanted to take a break from it before tackling that. Also, we've had Cyber Sleuth unfinished for like...several years now. I want to finish it!

Unfortunately I don't remember what we did last in the game. We've been saving vods but they're not currently highlighted on twitch nor uploaded to youtube. The last thing that really stands out to me was a mystery that led us to some kind of organ-harvesting cyber-harem. Which I did not expect from a Digimon game.

Anyways, come watch us fumble through the plot and maybe suggest nicknames for diggles!

Stream! Because I guess twitch links don't want to just be link posts, they want to embed. Well whatever. Stream incoming!

Last time, both our digglybop buddies reached their final evolutions so we took advantage of the time to go out and touch some plot. They were still megas by the end of the stream, so they'll probably pop tonight, but we've still got some time to see where the story takes us. Progress has been going faster, we're in chapter 4, and we've finally met some serious villains. After that we did more of the meat/veggie war in the wastelands, although it's not completed yet.

Not sure what's going to happen tonight, let's find out!

Y'know I forgot about that one!!! Yeah what's up with him

Okay, now! It's stream time! Last time we did a bunch of exploring and recruiting, and our diggles rebirthed for the fourth time. I named mine Eve and tried to get a Lucemon, and failed. So then Josh named his Adam and tried again, and failed. We have failed to summon satan. Anyways, the plot is starting to throw us bits and niblets of the villains at long last, and the current mission is to launch our Digimon city into the sky. So that it no longer touches the dirt, because the dirt is full of hacker virus. It makes enough sense for the digital world.

Join us!

EDIT: Tumblr seems to be up to something. I can't post the twitch stream as a link, it just won't appear, and the editor wants to force it as an embed. Okay I guess??????

Finally did some more art for our Digimon World: Next Order playthrough.  We’re going to stream again later tonight and I thought it would be good to draw some of our digglybop buddies before I fall behind further.  Our first pair were Atlus and Vesta, and when those two grew up and died they rehatched as these two.  Neptune on the left and Freyja on the right.  I still need to draw our third batch, Tyr and Pele, and we’re currently on our fourth, Adam and Eve (yes).  We’ll see them more tonight.

I don't know what specific thing this is referring to so I'm not sure how to answer. As far as we can tell Josh has two superpowers (1. seeing purple and 2. getting hit by cars) and neither of them are very useful. His backstory is mostly just being a hairy baby and drinking lemon juice. If there's some specific thing he's said that you want to unpack we can do that I guess.

Stream incoming!  More Digimon World: Next Order.  Last time we pushed further into chapter 2, with our human npc friends having conflicts with their Digimon.  A lot of time was spent exploring a new area called the ‘Boney Resort,’ which had a fun spoopy aesthetic.  At the very end we recieved a fancy evolution item that I immediately commandeered for my never-evolving champion diggle, forcibly evolving her so she can keep up with her counterpart.

Also, we went to the local mall a few days ago.  It’s...dead!  I may or may not go off on a long tangent about the wistful decline of the economic whalefall left behind by the ghost of Sears.  And my constant internal struggle over the pros and cons of buying knockoff Sanrio plush when I already have enough toys.  Join us!

Stream incoming!  More Digimon World: Next Order coming up.  Last time, our diggles rebirthed and trained up to champion level.  I got...a champion version of a usually mega level Digimon that can’t evolve anymore?  Josh got a dog.

Also, last time we streamed an inch-long bug crawled up my arm so there’s a point somewhere in the middle of the stream where we both freak out and get up and try to get rid of it.  If we spend the whole night talking about how we hope there’s no bugs around, that’s why.

Stream incoming!  Digimon World: Next Order again.  Last time we talked about Code Lyoko a lot, and then finished chapter 1 of the game’s plot.  No idea what chapter 2 is going to bring.  Also, our Digimon are both mega level and likely to reincarnate near the start of the play session, so we’re likely to get some fresh new monsters.  Feel free to suggest new names for them!

I don’t have a good topic to derail the stream with this time.  We’ve started watching Cardcaptor Sakura, which I never saw as a kid, but we’re early enough in the plot that I haven’t gotten any definitive things to say about it.  I guess you could drop fake spoilers to mess with me.  Or maybe make some anime recommendations.

Stream incoming!  We’re headed back to Digimon World: Next Order now that we’ve cleared Pokemon off our plate for now.  Last time we streamed this one we had expanded our little town a bit, and gotten a bit of plot started.  We actually have the previous vods highlighted for this one (parts 1 and 2) for anyone who wants to catch up.  But that’s for later, we’re streaming now!

Over the last couple of months we accidentally watched the entirety of Code Lyoko, so expect me at some point to derail a conversation to talk about it.

Stream incoming!  We’re doing possible the last Pokemon Violet stream before the DLC happens.  We’re finally done with classes and going into the Ace Academy Tournament.  After that, I dunno.  Roaming around, talking about stuff.  Join us!

I’ve gone through all the stuff in Scarlet/Violet’s base game now!  We do have Walking Wake and Iron Leaves left, but I think I’ll hold off on them until the DLC is actually out.  Although both Bulbapedia and Serebii have them listed as #1009 and #1010, they don’t actually have dex entries in the game, and I haven’t seen any actual source for those numbers.  So just in case, I’m gonna wait.  Getting the numbers right is part of how I organize and plan this stuff.  So I did this lil drawing as a placeholder.  Daily posts will end here until we get the DLC.

As usual I’ll still be active on my main blog and mmmmaybe I’ll get back into regular updates for my webcomic.  I might consider shifting back into Digimon dailies, because an anon informed me a while ago that Next Order has a numbered dex.  But I’m not sure I want to commit just yet!  I’m juggling other projects, poorly as usual.  We’ll see what I manage in the future!

Wooper is perfect, Wooper is universally beloved.  Can you improve upon perfection?  No, but you can flavor it.  The real brilliance in a simple design is that you can make a few tweaks and get a whole new dude, but still recognizable as a variant of the original.  Paldean Wooper is Poison/Ground-type and evolves into Clodsire, who is gen 9′s MVP.  I love the skull and crossbones look, with the little ribcage tummy marking, it’s so clever.  They should have been giving us new regional Woopers at every opportunity.

I normally do form variants all crammed together on one image, but I was having trouble fitting them all in so I did them separately and layered them.  I’m sure it’s more useful for people to have separates in these cases anyways.

Tauros has been a single stage, easily forgotten species (and an underrated cutie) that seemed like an obvious choice for the Spain-inspired Paldea.  It’s Fighting-type, that seems to be the only satisfying choice.  An all-black recolor is going to be cool no matter what.  And forms with type changes?  Amazing!

Except that the fire and water ones are super rare and hard to recognize from a distance.  I think that’s supposed to be the fun part, that you then have to look carefully at herds of Tauros to find the odd one out.  And it would be fun if they weren’t aggro bastards who will run you down in groups of five.  That’s my main issue.

Also, where is Miltank?

Miraidon is the only motorcycle lizard that actually makes sense as a motorcycle and that’s only because it’s just a robot.  It tucks its limbs in and the weird electro-fire energy stripe on its neck and tail pop out and become real wheels.  Actual wheels, that go all the way around, not a curled up neck and tail that vaguely look like wheels.  It’s not just a metal-plated style swap for Cyclizar, it’s a whole new creature of its own.  And that set a pretty high standard for all the other future Pokemon, who are mostly just disappointing metal-plated style swaps.

Koraidon has all the ‘biological motorcycle’ quirks of Cyclizar, but with style.  The feathers are really fun and add a wildness to it.  It feels more like this is a monster, as opposed to Cyclizar who is a more mundane creature or Miraidon which could just be a regular machine.  Koraidon has all the wonder and awe of ‘you can ride a legendary.’

Iron Valiant combines features of Gardevoir and Gallade and combines the types of both.  It’s great when the branched evolutionary families of Pokemon get some kind of shared upgrade or lore.  But this is a future Pokemon, which is even weirder.  Do the two branching lines rejoin at some point...before uh, turning into a robot?  The probably-not-real ‘lore’ given is that someone built it this way, which opens up a lot of story possibilities.  There’s a lot that could be going on here, and the design is generally cool enough that it invites you to imagine your own stories.

Like seriously, aside from it being a Paradox Pokemon or even a Pokemon at all, this is a fun robot design.  This could be a main character to some other type of game.  Even the Gallade diaper hips look acceptible in robot form.

I think Roaring Moon is the weakest of the past Paradox Pokemon, but that’s not saying much since they average out to really good.  And it’s not Roaring Moon’s fault that I don’t like it, really.  This isn’t just a past Salamence, this is Mega Salamence.  The weird crescent moon Mega Salamence design was just never going to be cool-looking, and Roaring Moon does improve on it a lot.  But it is still a Salamence stapled to a Batarang.

But getting a Paradox that alludes to a Mega is actually kind of a huge deal.  We haven’t had Mega Evolution for two generations now, so this weird little teaser is wild.  Is there a connection?  Is there going to be lore?  Maybe not.  But it’s neat.

Chi-Yu is a set of evil beads forming the eyes of a fire goldfish.  That’s pretty and cute but not sufficiently evil or legendary.  Since the body is just fire, I would’ve expected it to sometimes morph or grow bigger to look scarier during attacks.  From what I’ve seen it doesn’t really do anything other than wiggle its pretty fins.  Seems like a missed opportunity.  I really like the potential of this design.

Ting-Lu is supposed to be some kind of evil moose, made out of dirt, and instead of antlers it has a big iron bowl.  It’s pretty ugly.  The bowl is the important part of the design, because the lore is that the dirt moose formed around the pre-existing bowl, so they couldn’t do anything more abstract with it.  It would have been so easy otherwise, to just sort of make antlers that looked like cupped hands vaguely forming a bowl.  They still could have maybe tilted it or broken it in half and rearranged the pieces to be more antler-like.  Overall this thing’s just kinda ugly.