Mobian Daylife #8: Renfri Loveless, the Maned Wolf

 Renfri Loveless had started that morning with a brisk, quick hop in the shower. Drying herself off in her spacious studio apartment, two storeys above the streets of the busiest city in Starlight Zone, time of day notwithstanding.
Her fur appearing darker than usual when laden with moisture, she ran the towel up her arms, across her shoulders and chest before using what little of the towel hadn’t absorbed moisture to dry her long hair.
Sitting on the small kitchen table like a decorative plastic fruit tray was none other than the Phantom Ruby, tossed haphazardly aside like it was an everyday piece of jewelry. The stone’s unique, incomprehensible surface pattern, if one could call it that, pulsed with an unusual rhythm this evening. Moreso than usual, the maned wolf thought as she tossed the towel aside and approached the stone.
Renfri Loveless, or simply Ren the Maned Wolf, was not of this universe. She’d found her way not just across worlds, but time and a whole other layer of reality, thanks to the Phantom Ruby. 
The air was chilled inside Ren’s apartment, much colder than even the cooled city streets of Starlight Zone, and certain features showed themselves as a result of the chill as she walked around in only a pair of underwear, prepping herself for a night out on the city.

Mobian Daylife #7: A Whisper of a Date

 “’…Yo”
Whisper’s voice had been almost inaudible above the clatter and chatter of the restaurant’s patrons this evening. It was a fairly upper-class sort of joint, with marbled floors and tables draped in a velvety cloth of some sort. Walls were pale white stucco, reminiscent of the buildings in Apotos in a lot of ways, but trimmed with gold and candle-like light fixtures between each huge window.
As the building sat along the outskirts of the northern part of Central City, the view from said windows overlooked the mountainous regions and the wildlands that lay between.
Despite the ritzy look and feel of the overall decor, the people eating here this evening hardly looked the part. A few stuffed shirts here and there, maybe a woman or two in an elegant gown, sitting across from a sharp-dressed man. But the larger customer base was just the average Mobian looking for a meal that was a few steps above the fast food joint or the sort of diners that Laik was accustomed to.

Mobian Daylife #6: The Caster Wispon

 The small red and silver mechanical orb sat silently, empty, atop the table as the analyzer scanned every individual piece held within. The constant whirr of the machine as it projected an invisible beam that pierced right through the object’s core and beyond.
Miles “Tails” Prower had been utterly gobsmacked by the device. Called in to the Restoration on short notice by Laik himself after begging Lanolin for the fox’s extension, the young fox had behaved like the—admittedly—child that he was upon being handed the otherworldly tech.
“It shrinks and grows whenever you push the button at the center, like it’s organic, and yet…” He pushed the button, and the walnut-sized orb quickly expanded to softball size. He rapped the top of the ball with his knuckles. “It’s clearly a metal of some sort.”
Laik sat across from the fox, arms up to his elbows, laid flat across the table, head resting atop them. “That’s not even the most impressive part.” 
The wolf explained in detail the world of Pokémon. Where kids no older than Tails himself were out capturing dangerous monsters in the very sphere he held in his hand, then traded or pitted them against each other in battles.
Tails made a clicking noise with this tongue, “I hope Sonic never finds a way to that world.” 
The wolf nodded in agreement. “Said the same thing myself,”
“So not only can this very obvious electronic shrink and expand at the press of a button, but it is capable of trapping organic matter and storing it inside as energy… That is so cool!”
“I thought you would find it interesting—“
“No, I mean this kind of technology could revolutionize Mobius as we know it! Imagine! We could transport entire vehicles, heck even buildings and food stuffs for quick and easy transport!” The fox sprang from his seat, his two tails moving in a rhythmic motion, an indication of excitement.
He turned to Laik with sparkles in his eyes, “Do you have any more that I could study, please? I will pay you!” 
“Hey, hey, relax. That IS yours, on one condition,” Laik held up a finger, smirking. Tails’ ears flicked as he cocked his head.

A week later, in a field far away from Central City…

Mobian Daylife #5: Obligatory Beach Episode

 

"You can't just do stuff like this, Athena. Do you have any semblance of modesty whatsoever?!"
The last hours of the summer sun were ticking down as Mobians flooded the beaches of the Emerald Coast for one last day of summer fun. A tradition across the planet enjoyed by millions every year. 
The event had become so big that it was considered an international holiday, and everyone, right down to government workers and retail workers alike, was granted time off—or some semblance of it at the very least.
Those who chose to work were paid well for their commitment.
"I dunno what the big deal is, Lanolin. It's just a bikini!" Athena the Otter, a transplant from Soleanna and part of the latest group of new Restoration employees, questioned her new bosses’ obvious anger.
The otter was dressed in a cute two-piece bikini. Bright pink, reflecting her bubblegum personality. Perfectly matching the smooth curves of her body, accentuating some while hiding just enough to keep people looking.
She’d bought it on the spot because she thought it looked cute, not realizing how revealing it actually was.
Lanolin, dressed in a more modest tropical getup with an open button-up tied above her belly, had taken one look at the otter as she emerged from the boardwalk dressing stall and lost her mind.

Mobian Daylife #4: Root the Cicada

 The cicada saw it all from the vents. Not just the fight between the sheep and the border collie just now, but everything that had transpired here at the Restoration headquarters these past few months.
None of which had been as exciting as the Kuthul raid and seeing Laik the Wolf in action, taking down that giant ape.
Root the Cicada, barely thirteen years old and self-taught computer wizard and quote-on-quote master hacker, had burrowed his way into the comically large air vent network that spread through the Restoration’s office like a nervous system. His small size making it easy to move through the building, listening in on important, top-secret conversations. He’d felt just like a secret agent or a ninja, sneaking through the building.
Shortly after making his way into the building via a secret entrance from a nearby sewer, Root committed himself to setting up shop somewhere no one would ever go looking, and that was where he’d found the ventilation maintenance room. One had to go in from above or crawl through the vents themselves to gain access to it. His line of thinking had been, as long as he personally kept it working optimally, no one had any reason to come down there and potentially stumble across the home he’d constructed for himself.
And that was how he’d lived the last several months, collecting info and then sharing it with various individuals outside of the Restoration.
Using a VPN that he installed and uninstalled on the sole PC on the basement floor, Root had anonymously contacted multiple news outlets and independent journalists with info he’d thought would damage the reputation of the Restoration. Something he’s sworn he would do from the moment he left the decaying remains of his village in the Swampland Zone, if not outright destroy it.

Mobian Daylife #3: Lanolin's Big Breaks

 A day had passed since the attack on the Restoration, and clean-up was well underway, inside and out. The barricade that had been erected around the building had been removed, and the lockdown on the city block had been lifted once the threat of the Kuthul had been removed.
The training room on the bottom floor was still in the process of being repaired, with the old, bent training equipment being carted out and new pieces brought in. There’d be no repairing the old wooden training dummy Laik had donated.
The sheep sighed, pounding the back of her hand against the concrete wall. For a world that had been deemed “safe”, there was far too much crap going on wherever you looked. And that wasn’t including the smaller things the greater population didn’t see.
Sonic and his crew were off once again, investigating another Robotnik plot that was just getting off the ground. The same man who had managed to capture the entire planet in his mits, the same man that Sonic the Hedgehog allowed to go free once again instead of ending it and removing one of Mobius’ biggest threats.
She’d minded her Ps and Qs, but the media was beginning to wake up to the Hedgehog’s blatant acts of stupidity, asking the question of when was enough truly enough? Was the world in a constant state of chaos because Sonic, the world-renowned hero, allowed it to be so? How many lives could have been saved had he just done what needed to be done years ago?
She shook her head, watching the film crew move from point A to point B, filming B-roll footage for the five o’clock news. 
Well, the squid-thing was out of the bag now, thanks to the recent attack. “Here’s one more thing for you to worry about, Mobius.” She said quietly as she stepped back inside the building.

Mobian Daylife #2: The Otter and the Wisp

 Athena was a peculiar girl. She loved pretty pink things, sugary sweets and makeup, but also loved wading around in mucky swamp waters, handling slimy lampreys(as best as anyone could) and wading through tide pools where one could potentially step on a lionfish and clock out for life.
This was Athena the Otter, and she was a peculiar girl.

The bright summer morning sun beamed down heavily on Soleanna this day, far away from all of the happenings in Central City and even further from the off-world shenanigans happening to poor ol’ Laik.
The city was a coastal one not unlike Apotos, but where the architecture there was clean, smooth, and the city structured in tiers, Soleanna was sprawling and had a regalness to its overall look and feel, no doubt thanks in part to the royal family that lived there.
Where Apotos sported smoothed, white stucco and mortar, Soleanna was chiseled rock and rough edges, weather-worn and ancient, but well kept just the same.
Unlike most dwellings around Mobius, Soleanna was one of the few areas of the world where humans co-existed with their more animal-like counterparts. As a far more primitive, rarer species, humans were always at the mercy of any Mobian-born threat as they lacked the special abilities and means to protect themselves.
They also completely disowned Dr. Ivo Robotnik as their own, but that is a story for another time.

Mobian Daylife #1: Lanolin's Day Off

 Lanolin began her first day off from work in nearly three weeks in the same exact way she started every day of her adult life: By downing three cups of bitter black coffee before 7am.
She awoke from a relatively restful night’s slumber. Pillow pushed between her legs, bedsheet balled up and used as her pillow instead. An act that, by all accounts, should have left her waking up feeling tired and miserable. 
You didn’t toss, turn, bundle up bedsheets and straddle pillows in your sleep and wake up feeling like a brand new ewe.
But she found a new spring in her step every morning anyway. Ever since that wolf literally fell into her life and turned everything upside down.
A shower was in order; she smelled of sweat, dirt and powdered concrete from the previous day’s construction job down south. They paved over a family’s entire driveway and built a ramp for the wheelchair-bound grandmother(an unfortunate occurrence of the war). It had been a peaceful, if not labor-intensive day. Certainly better than the one she spent on that weird pony planet.

Cross-World Hero #5: It's A Jungle Out There

 

“Wha-wha-what do you want with me?!” Laik yelled, scurrying against the wall and nearly tumbling out the glassless window beside it.
Sitting just a little ways away, rocking back and forth in a chair that had to have been as old, if not older than Laik himself, was yet another ape. It was a much older fellow than the big lug that the wolf had given a good whomping to just moments ago, though the family similarities were apparent.
“Relax, child, if he wanted you smashed into a meaty paste, he would have done so by now. You’re not in any danger…” The old ape halted momentarily and looked back over his shoulder. The younger, larger ape lay on his side, back facing the two conversing characters. “As long as you don’t upset my son, at least.” The bigger ape scratched his butt and grunted.
Laik swallowed hard, his stature relaxing somewhat. Taking his eyes off the old ape, the wolf surveyed his surroundings. A large table made up of tied-together bamboo sat at the center of the room. Chairs and other furniture made of similar materials, bound together using vines and weathered rope. The only objects not of bamboo were carved from wood, some nails, and a white gloop—had to be glue… he hoped that’s what it was, at least.
WHACK!
The end of the old gorilla’s cane cracked across the top of Laik’s head, knocking more than a few strands of fur loose in the process.
“What did you do that for?! I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me!”
“I said that HE wasn’t going to hurt you,” gesturing to the big lug in the background. “You have been in my house for a whole five minutes and still have yet to answer any of my questions.”
“All right, fine, what did you ask me, anyway?” Laik asked, rubbing the soreness from his head away. The old ape rolled his eyes and shook his head the whole way back to his rocker.
“Who are you, and where did you come from?” Asked the cranky old ape again as he nestled back into his chair, milky eyes fixed on the wolf. “And who were those weirdos that proceeded you?”

Cross-World Hero #4: The Portal Out of Place

 

Humidity was the order of the day, with an added heat index of a hundred and eight degrees to make everything extra spicy this midsummer day in the city.
The sky was a brilliant blue, a sight that brought Laik a pang of nostalgia each time he looked up. Sure, it wasn’t as deeply colored as it was over Azure Lake, but it was pretty nice for what it was.
With a tummy full of a copious amount of eggs, bacon, and at least three cups of coffee, Laik stepped out onto the busy sidewalk of Central City with no real plans or an idea of what he wanted to do or where he should go. 
He had never been to the big city before; his adventures kept him in the remote countryside more often than not, and it had only been during the war with Robotnik that he first set foot in a dwelling bigger than his own village.
Sunset Heights was small in comparison. The wolf marveled at the sky-high buildings that lined each street, with even bigger ones off in the distance. Very few were destroyed in the carnage, and even those that were harmed only sustained minor damage… Well, except for the one with the giant Death Egg Robot leaning against it.

Cross-World Hero #3 : Not Sheepy At All

The first night in the new apartment had been as miserable as the wolf expected. There were sirens and car alarms going off at all hours of the night. Not a single insect or woodland critter scampering about to be heard. Not even roaches in the walls.  His only company that night was the gentle hum of the air conditioner.
His hopes got the better of him around 3am when he heard a crash that, his mind betraying the reality of his situation, he mistook for a sasquatch performing a warning by striking nearby trees over and over. That had just turned out to be one of his neighbors.
By all accounts, he should have been dead to the world, having hopped from world to world for what evidently had been several months by Mobius time. The physical and mental exhaustion of it all was there, feeling as if every individual strand of fur had ached. How he managed to answer the questions during the interrogation so clearly was anyone’s guess at this point. 
He was just glad it was over. Now if only he could get some dang sleep!

Mobian Daylife - A "Date" With Whisper the Wolf

Takes place before chapter 29 of 'Cross-World Hero'

“’…Yo”
Whisper’s voice had been almost inaudible above the clatter and chatter of the restaurant’s patrons this evening. It was a fairly upper-class sort of joint, with marbled floors and tables draped in a velvety cloth of some sort. Walls were pale white stucco, reminiscent of the buildings in Apotos in a lot of ways, but trimmed with gold and candle-like light fixtures between each huge window.
As the building sat along the outskirts of the northern part of Central City, the view from said windows overlooked the mountainous regions and the wildlands that lay between.
Despite the ritzy look and feel of the overall decor, the people eating here this evening hardly looked the part. A few stuffed shirts here and there, maybe a woman or two in an elegant gown, sitting across from a sharp-dressed man. But the larger customer base was just the average Mobian looking for a meal that was a few steps above the fast food joint or the sort of diners that Laik was accustomed to.

Currently Playing: Sonic CrossWorlds Racing

Not gonna lie, it was the crossover aspect of the game that hooked me. 

A wrap on Final Fantasy IX's 25th Anniversary playthrough

Always a blast play through, and each time I try to do things a little differently each time to spice up each run. 

Cross-World Hero #2: Central City Streets

 

Central City was bustling with activity this evening as Laik strolled down the street. Passing small and big businesses alike, including a massive two-story Crosshair sandwiched between two little Mom & Pop shops. The lights were dim within the bigger corporation. “Probably for the best,” Laik thought as he continued on his way.
The city was a noisy, sprawling concrete labyrinth. Radically different from the vast open fields of Azure Lake. The mountains here were present in the form of brightly lit skyscrapers, blotting out the fading evening sun.
The wolf lamented at the lack of sky, or the dim shimmer of the first star’s light. Where he should be smelling the mist coming off the lake, the sharp, pungent scent of sun-warmed asphalt clogged his senses. Honking horns, screeching tires and irate shouts replaced the symphony of songbirds and nocturnal insects.
Still, he couldn’t deny the charm of the hustle and bustle here. Even as the day was coming to a close, it seemed the activity in Central City was only ramping up. The anxiety of nightly raids from Badniks had seemingly all but subsided from the minds of Mobians, and life was returning to normal. Thankfully. 

Nintenget: Jakks 4-inch Varia Suit Samus and Mario

First time I've ever ever seen the basic Varia suit Samus figure, so I HAD to have her. 

Bought Mario because of his 40th anniversary. 

Nintendo Direct 9.12.2025 - Laik's Predictions and Wishes

 

When I commissioned Ghostlykuma for this particular piece of art, it was specifically for these events!

This is it, people. The first actual mainline Nintendo Direct event since before the Switch 2 launched, clocking in at “approximately” 60 minutes of raw Nintendo goodness. We haven’t had such a meaty event in foreeeever. And considering Nintendo’s ability to cram a ton of announcements in just 25 minutes, the possibilities with an hour-long persentation is staggering!

I don’t have a lot of time tonight so I wanna get this typed up and then get some rest because work has been roooough the past few days, thanks to poor scheduling and a lack of help. 

Predictions!

- Cold open with MonolithSoft’s new title, Xenoblade 4! Looks drop dead gorgeous and will have performance and presentation modes. New continuity not linked to original trilogy.
- New trailers for both Tomodachi Life and Rhythm Heaven, both to include Switch 2 enhancements.
- Sizzle reel of upcoming Switch 2 Editions and updates to take advantage of the console’s massive leap in power, including Xenoblade 1, 2 and 3 going full 1080@60fps.
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment gets a January 2026 release date, keeping it in the Winter 2025 window.
- Brand new Metroid Prime 4 trailer, ending with a December 4th release date.
- Digimon Story: Time Stranger for Switch 2 launching same day as other consoles, demo out same day as Direct.
- Final Fantasy VII Remake gets a November release date, along with the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for Spring 2026 (Got the date wrong, but eh, I'll still take it)
- Dragon Quest VII Fragments of the Forgotten Past HD Remaster announcement. (Nailed it)
- Resident Evil 7 Switch 2 Edition announced, launching the same day as Direct. Physical edition to follow along with Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 Remakes and Resident Evil 8 Village. Finally, the Resident Evil announcement block ends with Resident Evil 9 Requiem coming day and date with other consoles next year. (Didn't get the remakes, but 7, 8 AND 9 are all coming to Switch 2 next year!)
- Midway cold trailer: Sonic the Hedgehog 2026, launching Holiday 2026
- Mario 40th Anniversary Block! Miyamoto pops up, giving us the title for the next Mario movie (Super Mario World), along with a few more voice actors, for Yoshi specifically. From there, we get a string of micro announcements, like merchandise, collaborations, and amusement park stuff. The block ends with the reveal of the next big 3D Mario game, and it’s going to cause jaws to drop. Fully open world, with fully explorable Mushroom Kingdom. Side quests. Yoshi and, eventually, a Kart will be your main means of transportation. (I got the 40th anniversary block right and that was about it)
- After another series of headlines, including the announcement that Animal Crossing is coming to the Gamecube Nintendo Classics app later that day, we land at our final announcement of the day with a dramatic fade out…
- Resident Evil 0 is back in a full 3D remake on the Switch 2! Launching Summer 2026.

Wishes!!

- There are quite a few ports that I am particularly interested in that, while I got to play them on the Steam Deck, it wasn’t the best experience: The main one being Visions of Mana. I loved the game, but I don’t feel I got to really experience the game due to it just not running all that great on the Deck. 
- Also from Square-Enix, I would love to see the long-rumored Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Trigger remakes that have, at least as far as the first title goes, been in development limbo for a while, with no insider really knowing what’s going on there.
- I want another Zelda game in the same graphical style of Link’s Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom, but in full 3D and taking advantage of the fact that they’re plastic figurines. There are so many possibilities there from a game mechanic wise, especially with a Zelda game.
- Some sort of compilation of the Dreamcast/Gamecube era Sonic the Hedgehogs would be really nice. Adventure 1, 2, Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog in one package.
As much as a long shot as it is, I want Mega Man back. I wouldn’t care if it was Mega Man 12, or Mega Man X9, or even a brand new Battle Network-style game. I just want my Blue Bomber back, and on a new adventure.

 

(May or may not update later) 

Unexplainable Phenomenon

Applying RPG roles to Cross-World Hero Characters

If I am to play any RPG where you can name every character in your party, I do believe they will go as such

Laik = Hero

Lano/Lanolin = Heroine/White Mage

Root = Thief

Athena/Thena = Black/Blue Mage

The Story Behind Root the Cicada

As formally introduced into my Sonic the Hedgehog Alternate Universe canon this weekend, Root the Cicada makes his appearance in both his own (short) one off as well as the main ongoing story in Cross-World Hero.

The huge cicada emergence this year had inspired the character, and it was the insects life cycle that played into his story and personality. The specific brood this year were the seventeen year brood, last emerging in 2008. I used that idea to give him the "grown up too soon" thing, with him barely being a teenager but forced to face the world alone as an adult would as a result of the Egg Empire's reign. 

I needed a character that was going to be the mouthy edge lord that wasn't afraid to speak out against Sonic, echoing the feelings Lanolin and the rest of the world had begun to harbor in recent times.

And lastly, I needed the pervert archetype, and what better to fill that role with than with a hormonal teenager? 

Nintenget: Hollow Knight: Silksong

TOOK ME 40 MINUTES TO GET INTO THE ESHOP BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE FLOODING IT AND MAKING IT CRASH. 

State of the Multiverse - The Evolution of Laik and His Importance (to me)

 

So, if you had told me a year go that I'd be sitting here writing a big old blog entry about something that started as a Sonic the Hedgehog Original Character based on my Fursona, I'd probably have laughed. No lie. A year ago, I was of the mindset that wanted very little to do with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise outside of media tied to the Classic era, and honestly, had it not been for my picking up Sonic Frontiers and playing through it as Hurricane Helene tore up the east coast, I know for absolute certainty that I wouldn't be here typing this particular entry up.

But that's a blog entry for another time.

What I'm here to talk about today is my little video game guy: Laik the (Timber) Wolf. Cross-World Hero. Pizza connoisseur. Apple in the eye of one Lanolin the Sheep, whether she wants to admit it or not. 

Laik started out as hardly anything more than a direct 1:1 conversion of my fursona, Advrik Drahcir. Just because I wanted to see him a Sonic-styled character. But time went on, and my interest in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as a whole blew up and I suddenly--after years of only minding the Classic era stuff--wanted to take in everything it had to offer again, much in the same way I had as a kid. I think the third film did a lot for me in that regard as well, but I digress.

art by hallie.xd

 

When I took a good, hard look at Laik in what I now refer to his beta stage design, I got the feeling that things were off about him. There were aspects of his design that betrayed the, I guess you would call it, the design philosophy of characters in the series. Too many colors. Colors that clashed. It looked garish to me, and while the colors worked just fine coming from the character he'd been derived form, it just didn't flow right. Pretty much in the same way Whisper's design urks me because of how many colors she has going on(not to mention the mystery of how the blond on her fur across her body).

So I took Laik, then known as Rik, back to the drawing board. Bringing GhostlyKuma on to help flesh him out and bring him more in line with what an actual in-game Sonic character would look like while taking cues from the newer characters like (funny enough) Whisper and the wolf avatar from Sonic Heroes. When the design was finalized, I was ecstatic. While he still bore some similarities to the fursona he was derived from, he was a totally unique individual now.

art by ghostlykuma

 

A blank slate that I, almost five months on, am still carving!

I initially intended for Laik to appear in little on-off stories set around Mobius, dipping in and out of the IDW continuity in silly little adventures. But as development on Sonic Cross-World Racing came to light and the crossover capabilities of Sonic the Hedgehog and those like him became easier and easier for me to quantumize, I was struck with the idea to make him more than a simple Sonic OC.

He was going to be a world-hopping, crossover character while still being an individual--a Mobian--from the Sonic the Hedgehog. He would be my vehicle, my vessel in which I could use to write not just stories in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, but other video games and media as well! Something I had attempted once over the summer with Cartringer, a super sentai-inspired take on the idea that didn't get very far at all.

Once I realized what I had, I began to develop Laik, his backstory, the reasons for his world-hopping abilities and how it related to his role in Sonic Forces, which is where I kicked his overall story off, much in the same way the IDW comic series did for their story. Giving players the ability to create an avatar within the Sonic universe, no matter how limited, served as a great jumping off point as any for connecting Laik to the main cast in a way that didn't come off as forced or, dare I say it, cringe.

 

art by specterpie

 

 

As I developed him, I started realizing just how limitless the possibilities with his setup were. A Mobian that was able to(eventually, anyway) travel to any world and universe he wanted and go on adventures there with characters and such, all the while maintaining the Sonic the Hedgehog elements and balancing them with laws and lore from whichever piece of media I wanted to put him in at the time.

From that moment on, Laik pretty much replaced Advrik as my online persona. He was family-friendly(though his stories are on the upper end of the PG-13 rating), had a design and look that wouldn't look outlandish when standing next to the likes of actual humans or characters from say, oh I don't know, Dragon Ball Z. As I said, I see nothing but endless possibilities with the character and that has fueled my creativity like nothing else in recent memory. I write for fun, and I am having SO MUCH FUN writing about Laik and his adventures.

All of which can be read here on my AO3 account!

 

art by specterpie

Writing about the adventures of Laik the Wolf is allowing me to not only craft my own story within a universe full of characters, places and events that I love and have a lot of nostalgia for and a a substantial understanding of, but to also play around in OTHER media that I have similar love for. I don't have to worry about crafting my own continuity for those worlds from the ground up in order to inject myself into. I just throw Laik in there and go, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the grand scheme of things.

Plus, with Laik being a crossover character, it gives me ample opportunities to have him portrayed in various guises from pretty much any media IP I want, assuming I can find an artist willing to do so.

art by bubblesmcgee

art by sheyrosewind

 And just as an aside because it's an ongoing thing in the two ongoings. I've always wanted to re-enter the shipping fray, something I had done decades ago but fell out of as I began to lean more and more into creating entire casts for myself to do as I pleased as opposed to doing the "cringe" and pairing them up with a canon character... But then, I was crafting everything from the ground up with the likes of Secret of Memoria and Last Tail, so shipping wasn't really a thing at that point in my life.

Anywho. When I started reading the IDW comics, I was initially enamored by Whisper the Wolf. The strong, silent but mentally disturbed type that always seemed to draw my attention. But as the series continued, we got to meet Lanolin and hoo boy, lemme tell you, I fell head over heels for that sheep! And that was before I even learned the fandom had a hate boner for her for the stupidest reasons. 

 A strong female character with an attitude, caffeine addiction and isn't willing to just accept Sonic the Hedgehog's recklessness like most everyone else. What is there seriously not to love there? Her critical nature towards Sonic had actually eeked its way into my AU, with the world becoming increasingly concerned over the actions of Sonic and his friends.

And I won't lie. Her figure was a point of attraction as well. Mobians with such qualities don't really exist outside of Rouge and, oddly enough, Sonic Adventure 2 Amy. It gives her an air of maturity that few females in the franchise have had since the days of Sally Acorn. 

art by specterpie

 

I loved the character and the Wolf x Sheep pairing that she and Laik made so much that I integrated her into my AU and redesigned her, tossing out the tank top and replacing it with a halter vest and moving her bell to her hip in order to accentuate her chest further. Gone are the heavy military boots and in their place, hiking sneakers. The four tufts of wool on the back of her head have been replaced with a single cloud that replicates the look of a ponytail.

I've never redesigned a canon character before, but I really had fun doing this and am having a lot of fun just developing the slow-burning relationship between her and Laik.

 So yeah, there's the current "state of the multiverse" as far as Laik the Wolf goes, his history and where he's going. I have hundreds of ideas and writing prompts in my phone, as well as art ideas and such involving the little wolf Mobian.

Anywho, that's it for me for now. Thank you for reading this far. 

Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar

 Nearing not only the end of the 20-hour mark, but also the end of the first summer season in the game. My impressions of the game are nothing but solid, let me tell you. I have not enjoyed a game in this series as much as this since, oh, maybe Magical Melody? By relation, I'd say Harvest Moon DS as well, even though I didn't play that until much later.

But the game just oozes polish and quality. Two aspects the series has never known. Marvelous did truly wonderful things with this remake, and that, if nothing else, tells me that they do still know how to make enjoyable games in this genre and that itself is very exciting for the series' future.

That said, once I finish the first in-game year, I'll be hanging up my overalls for a bit as it'll be competing with Hollow Knight Silksong playtime, and I haven't been waiting six years for that game to have it share the limelight with another game. 

Beaten: Jitsu Squad

 

My god what a short-but-oh-so-sweet ride that was. I can't wait to go back and replay it as Baby.

Nintenget: Grand Theft Auto Trilogy