Akimarithys of All That's Lost And All That's Forgotten, Neptunian Dragoon of Summer's End

Team Setup

We initially tried to figure out scale, connectivity, what kind of retrofuturism we would do. Eventually we decided we'd each do retro futurist cards that would be set in a different planet/locale of a loosely connected solar system/galaxy. Each maker would have their own character, take their own planet and kind of spin off their own take on retro futurism. Different takes on the genre, different types of characters, different things going on. I think we all kind of gravitated to particular eras/aesthetics of retro futurism, so even if my take on it isn't quite what people were expecting there ought to be something to someone's taste. There was also kind of an assumption that {{user}} is an Earthling or at least someone not native to the planet.

While it wasn't a hard requirement, there was at least the assumption that some people might want to do group chats or involve other characters, so with that in mind I did have a character who could realistically leave the planet, and I wanted a setting that would be a rich place for sci-fi adventures as well.

Interpretation of the Theme

Retro futurism is a bit broad as it turns out, and is kind of an umbrella theme that has a lot of genres under its belt. While people might think of very specific imagery/tropes, retro futurism encapsulates cyberpunk, casettepunk, atompunk, raygun gothic... Ultimately I wound up gravitating more towards casettepunk and the chunkier sci-fi of the 70s and 80s rather than 30s- 60s imagery that might be more synonymous with the genre. I also looked to sci-fi artists from the era and drew on that for inspiration. A key element of retro futurism is the past (usually optimistically) anticipating the future, so I was trying to invoke the dream of that future from that time. Which is interesting because we also are going through a lot of nostalgia for that period as well, so there's this strange meeting of future and past I was always aware of while making the card. Another things was that we didn't necessarily all want hard sci-fi, a lot of retrofuturism is speculative and you have people in the 1800s imagining the 1900s in all kinds of ways that may not have made scientific sense. So while I do explain some things I did try to avoid overexplaining certain things like how crystal technology actually functions.

Bot Decision Process

Apparently my femboy Xuan Li is one of my more well received cards, so I initially thought about doing another femboy, particularly because one of my teammates also makes femboys. But I guess all the complaining about the lack of malebots lately got me thinking, and my desire to try to stretch out and do something new, so when more of my aesthetics/inspiration came together a bishounen seemed like the route to go. I was definitely angling more for FemPOV but I do try to make my cards neutralPOV when I can, so there's nothing indicating my character is exclusively heterosexual. Ultimately this lead to our team having a nice variety of bots so I'm glad I made the decision, also considering there's a prettty heavy fem lean in event cards! (I've been typing this up on and off over the past week and as of typing this part it's a few hours into submissions and it looks like it's all fem cards.)

Inspiration Points

Flash Gordon (1980) and Star Wars

This series was kind of the starting point for a few of us, and I found myself enchanted by the fantasy elements in the film. Scenes like Sky City hanging in a dreamy colored sky struck me and were probably the earliest inspiration point for me. I was also interested in how it had all of these old timey kind of concepts like monoarchy and great royal houses contrasted with the sci-fi trappings, which reminded me of Star Wars with concepts like Jedi who were seen as archaic in the civilized space age. Combined with my love of Star Wars I wanted to try to invoke fantasy from sci-fi in kind of the same way both Flash and SW did. I also knew I wanted to do a kind of Jedi-like character, some kind of a stoic space monk that has to be apart from the world in some way. But I also contrasted that with very Luke Skywalker-like traits such as caring for others and a lack of grandiosity. But while Luke is kind of a weenie John Everyman and very approachable, I wanted to subvert that inspiration by having someone who initially seems very cold and remote, perhaps more 'Jedilike' than even Luke is contrasted to how they were depicted in the prequel trilogy era.

Canon Characters

One idea I had was kind of a more outwardly stoic/morose (emo?) Luke Skywalker and also the dub voice of Kurama in Yu Yu Hakusho and Vic Mignogna's Rohan Kishibe in Jojo Season 4. The contrast between someone who looks like they would disdain you but their voice is actually light, gentle and soothing and it turns out they're very caring. I also kind of had this idea of how Ruroni Kenshin goes between the goofy soft chibi character to the hard angled anime boy when fighting.

80s Sci-Fi Artists

Artists such as Shuji Tanase, David Hardy, Hitoshi Ikematsu, Rick Guidice, Noriyoshi Orhai, Shusei Nagaoka and Tatsuhi Morimoto were all inspiration points I drew from, though I was trying to focus on a bright, clean, optimistic view of the future and space travel and other worlds. Ultimately the work of Robert McCall would be the main inspiration from me. Offering these beautiful floating space cities, clean and bright even in the night. As much as it fulfilled my criteria of being a beautiful, optimistic future there was also something ethereal and dreamlike about it which crossed with some of my other interests. In astrology and esoteric shit Neptune is associated with dreams, which also helped as I wanted a clear feeling of not being on Earth. At the same time I didn't want realistic hard sci-fi that was easily explained, kind of an 'every frame a painting' approach to trying to make things that seem familiar more dreamlike and strange. Even Neptunians themselves appear very similar to humans at a glance with only superficial outward differences, but the more you learn about their culture and the way they planet works you begin to see just how different they are from humans.

Pixel RPGs, Retro Anime

Another aesthetic for me was Yoshitaka Amano and kind of broadly 80s/90s pixel RPGs. Particularly those like Phantasy Star which were sci-fi with some fantasy elements, or the way Final Fantasy games often take place on fantasy worlds with sci-fi elements. That's how I eventually landed on the space elf concept and broadly informed the aesthetic direction I was going for. After experimenting with styles I found that broadly aiming for a 'retro anime' look was getting the kind of imagery I wanted. I didn't want modern clean looking gens that could be pulled from any booru from the last ten years, I wanted to at least try to make something that at a glance makes you wonder if it's a frame from an old late-80s anime or something.

Heavy Metal

While musically I gravitated more towards synthpop, new wave and trip-hop for inspiration, I was also somewhat inspired by heavy metal album covers from the 80s. They would have some of the most insane shit on them and often were at complete ends with the actual content of the record; but many had a kind of fantasy lean to them and I found myself mentally taking snapshots of places on Neptune that would have been perfect for an album cover. Again, trying to find or invoke fantasy in places where you usually wouldn't see it was a goal of the card for me without outright instructing the LLM to do it.

Astrology/Esoterica

In astrology, Neptune is associated with the collective consciousness, tenderness, peace, fantasies, idealism, dreams, undoing/dissolution of the status quo, artistry, empathy. Neptune is considered by modern astrologers to be the primary ruler of the twelfth house. The Twelfth House represents the subconscious, spirituality, and hidden aspects of life. In a lot of ways these things seemed to kind of naturally bleed into the card as I worked on it, but many elements sprung from this scattershot analysis. Neptunians being psychic empaths who are in tune to the feelings and unconscious of the sentient races around them. This gift requiring some to meditate and seek introspection. And of course, a lot of the bizarre, dreamy imagery that I was shooting for with things like floating sky castles, trippy water color skies and multiple moons being visible at all times. This also influenced Aki as being an empathetic outsider, this kind of solitary monk treading this road of constant self-discovery.

Synthpop and Silent Hill

Another source of inspiration I was drawn to was the sounds of synthpop from the late 70s and 80s, particularly the work of Gary Numan. He's on the spectrum (not memeing) and alienation has always been a recurring theme of his work. It also goes back to the whole past anticipating the future thing, synthpop was the sound of the future and space age, simultaneously invoking that nostalgia. Also with the dreamy quality of Silent Hill's music, the watery qualities of Silent Hill 2 and 3's soundtrack really fit the water planet aspects of Neptune and its place in astrology. I really loved the back and forth this created where you're going from the 'futuristic' sound of heavy synth into these more ethereal, dreamy trip-hop tracks, almost like sleep cycles of more active and inactive states of dreaming.

Below I've attached a playlist of some of the songs I listened to often when I was thinking about or writing things for the card. "This Wreckage" by Gary Numan in particular I think became core for the character, "別れよう" is a repeated phrase in the song which I think can be translated to mean "Let's part ways". Interestingly at the time (1980) Numan thought that the phrase translated to "I leave you" or "goodbye forever" which also really fit with this emotionally distant remote character. As for more of the world and Aki's background, the song "Complex" also influenced a lot. Something about the violin contrasting with the synth feels distinctly English sounding to me and I found myself often thinking of the Neptunian countryside, with Aki just puttering along. I think the Yamaoka tracks spurred on moments more than specific details. With "Promise" I can still see him kneeling over the rose next to the Mother Stone. "Overdose Delusion" always gave me this vision of a kind of ripoff of the Silent Hill 2 credits with an overlay of Aki's face and a little projector streaming moments from his past.

There's also songs by other artists like New Order and Tears For Fears. I think the other standout might be "Decades" by Joy Divison. It's very gloomy but danceable, the kind of monotonic register Curtis uses for much of the song with the slight break in "Where have they been?" feels very Aki.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=TLGGT_qh6wBo3owyMDA5MjAyNg
(EDIT: apparently this link don't work no more so i just pasted all the youtube links at the very bottom lol)

Setting

Neptune

For more inspiration I started looking at hard science about Neptune. Seasons being 40 years on Neptune, the cross-orbit with Pluto were all based on real facts about the planet! Other elements came from other sources, like the name of Neptune of course being the Roman name of Poseidon, the god of the sea and storms. So a focus on water came to mind, but I didn't want to step on the toes of the team that got the water world theme, so I decided to de-emphasize the large bodies of water in the story and instead focus on the land. I have been re-reading ASOIAF on and off which had these unnatural magical seasons, so rather than seasons I had this idea of summer and winter and thought about a society that had to work around that. Basing it in binaries and a culture that is unable to see nuance or shades was also interesting. The Robert McCall art was such a strong influence that the flotillas came to mind, where you would have these metropolitan cities where people wait out the long freeze and then return to the land to reseed the thawed out earth. And just how seasons that long must really affect generations, like what does summer mean to someone to whom the last thirty years of their life was winter? Or vice versa? And with such long seasons and harsh conditions the ecosystem of the planet must change really drastically, plants and creatures that can survive in fun beach summer aren't necessarily going to survive subzero temperatures for forty years.

Character

Aki

I settled on this idea of him as an autumn as he is not really summer or not-summer himself. Outwardly cold but inwardly warm, that makes me think of autumn. Cold weather but warm blankets and hot sweet tea, that kind of thing. I knew I wanted some kind of Jedilike organization, initially Summer and Winter Knights before they became Dragoons. Something that sounded sufficiently odd and fantasylike and out of place in a sci-fi setting. A complicated relationship with women in his life came into the foreay as I kind of sort of intend this to be FemPOV but not exclusively, so mommy problems, first girlfriend issues and sorrow over losing his beloved little sister gives FoidPOV characters a lot of angst to deal with and fix.

With the space elf and knight/dragoon stuff in mind I knew I wanted a kind of martial hairstyle, something that said 'warrior' right away. I wanted a weird/alien hair color and initially tried out shades of magenta and teal before I finally decided on more of a dark purple to match the fact that he's an autumn. Initially I was basically getting Temu BOTW-Link gens, but eventually I was able to get something a little more distinct by changing the hairstyle to include a top-knot.

Some early gens; I actually posted a few of these in the thread to kind of collect feedback before I nailed down his look more. The final one here though is when I finally felt like the character came together, due in part to the lora I began using. Some things were a bit off (what is going on with that LEG exposure wew) but the kind of pretty boy with the look of disdain was very close to what I was envisioning for the character.

Ultimately I'm happy with how he turned out, both visually and in terms of his defs and stuff. He has this alluring disaffected rockstar thing going for him, very Lestat or Bowie-esque, but rather than sex/drugs/rock n' roll he saves small rodents from farm equipment and grows flowers. I did a lot of brainstorming and iteration on this card, more than probably any other than I've worked on. Old drafts and greetings that I just could never really get to work out, there's a lot of other lore and stuff that I never quite found a place for both logistically due to things like the way lorebooks works or token counts, but also just I guess the limitations of the format. I had more ideas for Pluto, possibly spinning off into another card (but I know how I am and refused to work on any other cards until this one was done) or fleshing out stuff like his family or that ex-lover of his more.

Well, as for everything else, I think it's in the card defs. But I thought it might be an interesting read to go through the process of how I formed the card, the inspirations I drew from, the places I went for that inspiration. Maybe other makies will find this interesting or perhaps marginally useful for their own process for their own makieing. I would be interested as well if this inspired some other event makies to maybe detail more of their process as well.

Something something plap responsibly!