EDIT: Nevermind the above. Turns out the so-called backup was actually more along the lines of a "worthless piece of shit"--the only pages it backed up were the main page, the "help" page, and the various categories. In other words... the exact things I wouldn't ever actually need to back up because they contain little-to-no actual content. But they were really good about making sure every single last image I had uploaded to the wiki was preserved... though I still have all of those (since they were, y'know, UPLOADED rather than written on-site) so that's pretty much "worthless piece of shit" too. Ugh. >_<
Friday, December 19, 2014
The Fnrrf Ygm Schnish Wiki... not quite dead?
EDIT: Nevermind the above. Turns out the so-called backup was actually more along the lines of a "worthless piece of shit"--the only pages it backed up were the main page, the "help" page, and the various categories. In other words... the exact things I wouldn't ever actually need to back up because they contain little-to-no actual content. But they were really good about making sure every single last image I had uploaded to the wiki was preserved... though I still have all of those (since they were, y'know, UPLOADED rather than written on-site) so that's pretty much "worthless piece of shit" too. Ugh. >_<
Thursday, October 16, 2014
The return of Supernum?
Nah, this isn't announcing a new game or story or anything -- just going over some stuff.
Supernum, in case you don't know (or don't remember, in the case of a few who might be reading this) was one of my longest-running characters from the elementary school years. After making him up sometime during my 3rd grade year, I wrote stories, drew comics, and made games featuring him right up until late 2003. And then there was another short-lived attempt at a Supernum OHRRPGCE game that started up in 2008, with occasional fizzles of game ideas sparking up here and there throughout 2009 (at least until I got started on Okédoké! and the idea of a Supernum game basically left my mind.)
Originally, Supernum was inspired by Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, being a superhero who starts out as a normal human but uses an object as a power source to transform. Supernum even used a coin (the Num Coin, specifically) just like the original set of Power Rangers, though his coin was palm-sized rather than actually the size of normal coins and didn't plug into his belt buckle (as he never even had a belt buckle until the 2010 design mentioned below.) As Supernum, he gained enhanced strength (just how enhanced varied; in early stories his strength isn't focused on as much, but at one point after a power boost he becomes capable of lifting a house off its foundation with a single hand, seemingly without much effort) and durability (partially provided by his near-indestructible Num Armor) as well as a variety of weapons. Though he was drawn with the Numnum Sword at times and used it in a few of my old stories, the most commonly used part of the Supernum arsenal in early stories was the Num Gun, which allowed him to fire blasts of various basic types of energy (freeze rays, electrical "Zzzter" blasts, etc.) as well as beams specially designed to destroy certain specific kinds of enemies (settings with cheesy alliterative names like "Dragon Destruction" and "Barney Bashing" existed, for example.) He also had several devices with which to scan enemies to determine their weak points (often used in conjunction with the Num Gun's various settings) and teleport himself to other locations (the "portable Num Warps" mentioned in a few stories), as well as some more unusual ones that generally only got used in one story before never appearing again. Some examples: Num Land Mines, a "Computer Nummer" device which would crack passwords and other security measures, communication devices, a "Num Army Knife" used to cut ropes and do other minor tasks, and a "Zzzter Launcher" which seemingly was only used in one story because someone else had the Num Gun (which had a Zzzter setting that would seemingly render this weapon a bit redundant) at the time. He also could call upon a giant robotic Numnum known as the "Super Big Num" (sort of like his version of the Power Rangers' megazords), and in some stories (after getting the enhanced Num Coin that gave him the super-strength mentioned above) he was able to enlarge himself to enormous sizes as well. His human identity was named Eddie, and Eddie was... well, basically just me. XD
As things went on, Supernum gained even more special abilities. As I started to watch Sailor Moon, he began to use Num Power to attack directly instead of just generating various gadgets using it; the Num Gun started appearing less often and Supernum would instead unleash a powerful blast of orange energy at his opponents by crossing his arms in an X shape over his chest while yelling "Numnum Smash!", releasing the blast when he swung his arms down to his sides. The Numnum Smash was his only special attack at first, but as time went on he developed more--not more powerful ones (Numnum Smash quickly was established as his ultimate attack) but a variety of weaker ones, like the Num Zzzter (yet again making Zzzter Launchers redundant) and Num Bomb (basically a scaled-down Numnum Smash, generating an exploding sphere of Num Power that was only about the size of a basketball rather than being as large as Supernum's entire body.) He also had some physical attacks, such as the Num Punch and Num Kick, which were basically just a regular punch and kick enhanced by a burst of Num Power. He would eventually get even more varied powers, like the piercing Num Beam (which started out as a weak attack, then inexplicably became more powerful than either the Bomb or Zzzter, before finally returning to its "low-level Num Power attack" position once again), the protective Num Power Shield, and even a Num Healing ability which allowed him to heal the wounds of allies (or himself) by infusing them with Num Power. His ultimate move while fighting alone remained the Numnum Smash, but as other Supernums and characters with similar powers appeared, a variation known as "Double Numnum Smash" made an appearance when extremely powerful enemies needed to be finished off for good.
Even after that point, Supernum had a spaceship added to his arsenal (most likely inspired by me really getting into Star Wars around 5th grade--of course, he had to have a spaceship then. XD) Unlike the Star Wars ships, however, Supernum's ship never relied on "faster than light" movement; instead, the ship was able to open Num Warps to other locations, allowing instant transportation over literally any distance (even between universes, which would come in handy considering that Supernum would need to travel between the First and 40th Nherbis on a regular basis.)
After the addition of the spaceship and some new special moves, Supernum's abilities wouldn't really change much until the 2000s, when I came up with a new series of games and stories which covered years of time and focused partly on Supernum and partly on an assortment of other characters. Toward the end of these storylines, Supernum gained a powered-up form which changed his armor (the new armor was bulky and more of a dark golden metallic color rather than orange) and provided him with a shield (the Numnum Shield, not to be mistaken for his Num Power Shield technique which was an energy barrier rather than a solid metal shield) in addition to his sword. He gained this powered-up form in both the new Supernum series and in the Crappy World comics (which followed a completely different story which didn't seem to overlap with the previously-mentioned game series at all), both times by having the alien Axn'zuu merge with the Num Coin. In this new form, he gained a few new techniques (including one where he infused the Numnum Shield with massive amounts of Num Power and threw it like a boomerang) but mostly just became stronger in terms of raw power, allowing him to take on opponents he couldn't have hoped to fight before.
The 2008 attempt at a Supernum game would have wiped away most of the above stuff, bringing Supernum back to the way he was in my middle school years: he had the Num Gun with its adjustable energy beams, he had a few special techniques that he would learn over time like Num Beam, Num Bomb, Num Zzzter, and Numnum Smash (with Num Power Shield and Num Healing most likely making appearances as well), and he could summon the Super Big Num eventually, but the powered-up form, the Numnum Shield, and the dozens of random single-use gadgets were mostly removed.
And now that you know how his powers developed, here's some pictures so you can see how the way I drew him developed, too!
First is an attempt from earlier this year at copying how I drew him later on in 3rd grade (after some of the early "haven't decided on the details yet" weirdness--like having mini Numnums for hands in addition to his Numnum head--was phased out.) Unfortunately, I don't have any actual 3rd grade Supernum pictures that I'm aware of, so this will have to do.
Here's (part of) Supernum as I drew him in 2000 or 2001, during my first year or two at high school:
And here's a panel from the 2003-2004 Crappy World: Zyorudenu comics I drew, which were Supernum's last appearance until I tried to bring him back in 2008:
And finally here's a picture of him I painted, also from earlier this year, showing how I draw him now:
Though he's being drawn a hell of a lot better these days than he was back in the elementary school years, you can probably see from the above two pictures that the basic design of Supernum hasn't changed a whole lot. He's got a head that resembles the body of a Numnum (sans legs, feathers, or tail... which are features that weren't present on the original Numnum design), a humanoid lower body covered in full body armor that's mostly of an orange color (with the exception of his gloves and boots which are black), a cape with the Num Power symbol on it that's orange on the outside and red on the inside, and of course the legendary Numnum Sword, a blade with the properties of the super-metal known as snozzorium (though it's actually made up of super-concentrated Num Power rather than any sort of actual solid material.)
There have been some changes, though, even as the basic design stays pretty much the same.
His armor has changed from purely Power Rangers-style spandex to something halfway between that and metallic armor as time has gone on, as seen by the presence of a clear "heavier armored" area on his upper chest now. Ever since 5th or 6th grade this has been referred to as the "Num Armor." Speaking of his armor, he no longer has the English letter N on it anymore, with the random Earth letter finally being replaced by the Khurbyish symbol representing the same consonant sound (which is identical to the Num Power symbol he's always had on his cape) in mid to late high school.
The Numnum Sword has gotten a more unique design over time, shifting from "generic sword" in early drawings (or no sword at all, in the earliest of them all) to a long, semi-heavy, single-edged blade with a bit of a curve to the end starting around late 4th grade or early 5th grade. The sword's vaguely claw-like decorations were added around that time or shortly after. Overall, the Numnum Sword's design has been pretty consistent since around 6th grade, though now I'm drawing it with a longer handle since it's intended to be a weapon that can be used with either one or both hands.
His shoulder and knee pads probably appeared for the first time in late 4th or early 5th grade, originally just being drawn as dark-outlined circles with the letter "N" on them (a way of drawing them that stuck around all the way through high school, as you can see in the Crappy World: Zyorudenu panel) and eventually shifting to having small Num Power symbols on them instead of an N. In recent colored versions, they've been showing up as a dark, sometimes slightly reddish brown-black rather than just pure black, a color choice that has expanded to his gloves and boots as well. The Num Power symbols on them are red now, much like the ones on his armor and cape.
Sometime during the early high school years, I got a bit better at drawing his cape as an actual cape rather than this awkward blanket-like object dangling from... someplace behind him, maybe... and defying all sorts of laws of physics. The "cape fasteners" on his armor first started appearing in the later high school years, making his cape look even more cape-like. His cape has always had the Num Power symbol on it ever since I made it up (some very early pictures may have had a plain ol' N on both his cape and armor), though it may have briefly had an N on it for a while during the high school years when the Num Power symbol first appeared on his chest in place of the old N.
And finally, during the time between 2008 and today, he finally got a belt and a more normal-looking torso structure rather than the vague torso/leg transition shown in older drawings from elementary to high school. I haven't completely decided whether he should have a buckle on this belt or not; a drawing in the 2010 time range had him with an N on his belt, while the most recent drawings have no buckle at all.
=====================
Anyway... now that I've gone over Supernum's history... what I was originally going to talk about here. XD
I'm wondering if I should bring back Supernum in some form. I still kinda want to make a Supernum game/story/comic of some sort. I almost feel like dropping Supernum was part of where I went wrong with The K'hyurbhi Lands--when attempting to bring back the old Nummorro (minus some of the absurdity, like poop monsters and such, that existed in the earliest years when the world was still called "Numnum Land") and clear out all the poorly-thought-out new garbage that had accumulated in its place during my high school years, I somehow ended up not bringing back the character who was always the focus of my Numnums stories from the very beginning, instead focusing on some random Numnum, K'hyurbhi, and Blurby (okay, Upchukk the Blurby wasn't entirely random, he's an established character from the 5th/6th grade era. The other two are pretty much newbies in comparison, though.)
I'm not sure if I want everything to be the same as the old Supernum stories, though. In particular, making Supernum's human identity be basically... me... is something I'm not sure I want to keep around. Partly because that would mean I'd either have to figure out some way to connect the Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School story to a new Supernum story (which would mean that Eddie/Supernum would be 18+ years old in this new Supernum story, which is... not at all like the original where Eddie was a kid when he first became Supernum) or start a new alternate-universe sort of thing where the events of Alleghany Hell School don't happen and things are different in general. Which would mean I'd have two different versions of any character who appears in both the Fnrrf Ygm Schnish series and possible new Supernum series (like Eddie if I keep Eddie-as-Supernum after all, the Burijeoo queen Bridget, and some who appeared in The K'hyurbhi Lands who might not even count since I might just be ditching TKL entirely rather than trying to fit it in the same set of 40 nherbis as either FYS:AHS or a possible new Supernum story.)
I've toyed with the idea of someone else being Supernum before, of course. There were actually three Supernums in my old stories--the original Supernum, K'hyurbhi Supernum (originally called "Kirby Supernum"), and Blurby Supernum, their appearances different only in color scheme (original was orange/red/yellow, "K'hyurbhi" was blue/black, "Blurby" was white/silver/gold) and randomly named after two other Nummorrian species who had nothing to do with their Num Coins as far as I can remember. The Numnum/K'hyurbhi/Blurby trio was a recurring theme even back then, though, so that's probably why I did that with the Three Supernums too. I eventually decided that the identity of K'hyurbhi Supernum was to be a young martial artist named Luke, based on a kid I knew when I was very young; Blurby Supernum may have been a punk-looking guy named Charles (also based on someone I knew in the early elementary school years) under the armor, though it seemed in the games/stories where he appeared he didn't seem quite as okay with revealing his identity compared to the other two. Eddie, Luke, and Charles were three of the four kids who appeared in the Cowcocows stories I came up with in 2nd grade; the fourth kid, Mark, was mysteriously absent from all future stories. Possibly because the real-life Mark turned out to be kind of a jerk after 2nd grade ended, while Luke remained friends with me and Charles mysteriously vanished (...perhaps to go off and save the world while hidden inside the Numnum-headed armor of Blurby Supernum. The world may never know!)
The 2000s-era game ideas featured a few "future Supernums," one of which being a cat-like guy named Muyeo (who had the original Num Coin) and another being an unnamed half-Burijeoo (who ended up with the K'hyurbhi Supernum coin.) Who, if anyone, had the Blurby Supernum coin in the future is unknown.
In addition to the Three Supernums and future equivalents, there were also a couple of "extra" Supernums throughout the years. There was Edwin Supernum, an evil clone of Eddie with his own Supernum powers (color-coded black and gray with a Dark Num Smash move instead of the original Numnum Smash, of course), and Killer K'hyurbhi once transformed into "Super Killer K'hyurbhi" using a copied Num Coin (with help from a Num Power infusion from an artifact known as the Red Num, as K'hyurbhis are naturally lacking Num Power and couldn't transform into Supernum forms normally.) On Gumakia, a moon of Brijetoo, one of the mushroom inhabitants had his own Supernum form known as the "Golden Mushroom," which caused him to grow a pair of arms and wield a pretty big sword. Eddie's little sister Julia even had her own Supernum-like forms, first the wimpy "Super Julia" (which seemed to only give her low-level Num Armor rather than any actual powers) and later a "Julia Dragon" form which turned her into a vaguely dragony critter with a human head and power similar to that of Supernum's, at least in terms of physical strength. There was also an abandoned plot point in Return of the Coraudos which involved another Supernum appearing in order to save Eddie-Supernum from a losing battle with Coraudo Slug. This "new Supernum" seemed to have actually taken Eddie's Num Power rather than having his(?) own, as the story involved a note appearing in Eddie's house which said that he "can't be Supernum anymore." I never finished this story ("you can't be Supernum anymore" was the cutoff point, I'm fairly sure), so I'm not sure where I was going with this, but I vaguely remember that this new Supernum wasn't entirely good and his(?) secret identity might not have been somebody who was on the good guys' side at all. Looking back, this seems like it would be a great place to reintroduce that fourth kid Mark who went missing and have him be a neutral/bordering-on-evil Supernum who (as nice as it was for him to help out with the Coraudos) needs to be overthrown before he can ruin the reputation of the Supernum name or something like that... though I can't imagine him inexplicably knowing how to steal Num Power or being competent enough to handle Coraudo Slug where the original Supernum had failed (...maybe Supernum weakened him just enough in the previous fight that this new Supernum could fight him off?)
I also wonder what to do with the Three Supernums. I like the concept, but "K'hyurbhi Supernum" and "Blurby Supernum" are pretty bad and not-particularly-fitting names (I tried to make them apply a bit better in the 2000s era by giving them K'hyurbhi and Blurby themed attacks--Blurby Bomb, Kihlah Smash, and so on--but it was still just weird that Num Power would give them attacks themed after creatures that can't even use Num Power!), and I'm thinking that if I use them again I'll have to mess with their designs so they're not just "Supernum, but with different colors and symbols" like they were before. The different color schemes can stay I think (I particularly like the blue armor/black inside of cape colors for K'hyurbhi Supernum), but something else about them needs to change so they're not just recolors. Maybe one can be taller and thinner, one can be shorter and bulkier, and the armor design can change around a bit to match those features? And of course they could have different weapons; I did give K'hyurbhi Supernum the Staff of Parupoo in the 2000s-era games after Kayana was defeated, but... I'm thinking that's a bit odd and un-fitting for him. So a staff yeah, but not that staff anymore.
Any thoughts from people who aren't me? I know I've had a couple people express interest in Supernum in the past year and want to know when/if I'll be making anything that features him, so I have to wonder if anyone has any ideas after reading all this.
Supernum, in case you don't know (or don't remember, in the case of a few who might be reading this) was one of my longest-running characters from the elementary school years. After making him up sometime during my 3rd grade year, I wrote stories, drew comics, and made games featuring him right up until late 2003. And then there was another short-lived attempt at a Supernum OHRRPGCE game that started up in 2008, with occasional fizzles of game ideas sparking up here and there throughout 2009 (at least until I got started on Okédoké! and the idea of a Supernum game basically left my mind.)
Originally, Supernum was inspired by Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, being a superhero who starts out as a normal human but uses an object as a power source to transform. Supernum even used a coin (the Num Coin, specifically) just like the original set of Power Rangers, though his coin was palm-sized rather than actually the size of normal coins and didn't plug into his belt buckle (as he never even had a belt buckle until the 2010 design mentioned below.) As Supernum, he gained enhanced strength (just how enhanced varied; in early stories his strength isn't focused on as much, but at one point after a power boost he becomes capable of lifting a house off its foundation with a single hand, seemingly without much effort) and durability (partially provided by his near-indestructible Num Armor) as well as a variety of weapons. Though he was drawn with the Numnum Sword at times and used it in a few of my old stories, the most commonly used part of the Supernum arsenal in early stories was the Num Gun, which allowed him to fire blasts of various basic types of energy (freeze rays, electrical "Zzzter" blasts, etc.) as well as beams specially designed to destroy certain specific kinds of enemies (settings with cheesy alliterative names like "Dragon Destruction" and "Barney Bashing" existed, for example.) He also had several devices with which to scan enemies to determine their weak points (often used in conjunction with the Num Gun's various settings) and teleport himself to other locations (the "portable Num Warps" mentioned in a few stories), as well as some more unusual ones that generally only got used in one story before never appearing again. Some examples: Num Land Mines, a "Computer Nummer" device which would crack passwords and other security measures, communication devices, a "Num Army Knife" used to cut ropes and do other minor tasks, and a "Zzzter Launcher" which seemingly was only used in one story because someone else had the Num Gun (which had a Zzzter setting that would seemingly render this weapon a bit redundant) at the time. He also could call upon a giant robotic Numnum known as the "Super Big Num" (sort of like his version of the Power Rangers' megazords), and in some stories (after getting the enhanced Num Coin that gave him the super-strength mentioned above) he was able to enlarge himself to enormous sizes as well. His human identity was named Eddie, and Eddie was... well, basically just me. XD
As things went on, Supernum gained even more special abilities. As I started to watch Sailor Moon, he began to use Num Power to attack directly instead of just generating various gadgets using it; the Num Gun started appearing less often and Supernum would instead unleash a powerful blast of orange energy at his opponents by crossing his arms in an X shape over his chest while yelling "Numnum Smash!", releasing the blast when he swung his arms down to his sides. The Numnum Smash was his only special attack at first, but as time went on he developed more--not more powerful ones (Numnum Smash quickly was established as his ultimate attack) but a variety of weaker ones, like the Num Zzzter (yet again making Zzzter Launchers redundant) and Num Bomb (basically a scaled-down Numnum Smash, generating an exploding sphere of Num Power that was only about the size of a basketball rather than being as large as Supernum's entire body.) He also had some physical attacks, such as the Num Punch and Num Kick, which were basically just a regular punch and kick enhanced by a burst of Num Power. He would eventually get even more varied powers, like the piercing Num Beam (which started out as a weak attack, then inexplicably became more powerful than either the Bomb or Zzzter, before finally returning to its "low-level Num Power attack" position once again), the protective Num Power Shield, and even a Num Healing ability which allowed him to heal the wounds of allies (or himself) by infusing them with Num Power. His ultimate move while fighting alone remained the Numnum Smash, but as other Supernums and characters with similar powers appeared, a variation known as "Double Numnum Smash" made an appearance when extremely powerful enemies needed to be finished off for good.
Even after that point, Supernum had a spaceship added to his arsenal (most likely inspired by me really getting into Star Wars around 5th grade--of course, he had to have a spaceship then. XD) Unlike the Star Wars ships, however, Supernum's ship never relied on "faster than light" movement; instead, the ship was able to open Num Warps to other locations, allowing instant transportation over literally any distance (even between universes, which would come in handy considering that Supernum would need to travel between the First and 40th Nherbis on a regular basis.)
After the addition of the spaceship and some new special moves, Supernum's abilities wouldn't really change much until the 2000s, when I came up with a new series of games and stories which covered years of time and focused partly on Supernum and partly on an assortment of other characters. Toward the end of these storylines, Supernum gained a powered-up form which changed his armor (the new armor was bulky and more of a dark golden metallic color rather than orange) and provided him with a shield (the Numnum Shield, not to be mistaken for his Num Power Shield technique which was an energy barrier rather than a solid metal shield) in addition to his sword. He gained this powered-up form in both the new Supernum series and in the Crappy World comics (which followed a completely different story which didn't seem to overlap with the previously-mentioned game series at all), both times by having the alien Axn'zuu merge with the Num Coin. In this new form, he gained a few new techniques (including one where he infused the Numnum Shield with massive amounts of Num Power and threw it like a boomerang) but mostly just became stronger in terms of raw power, allowing him to take on opponents he couldn't have hoped to fight before.
The 2008 attempt at a Supernum game would have wiped away most of the above stuff, bringing Supernum back to the way he was in my middle school years: he had the Num Gun with its adjustable energy beams, he had a few special techniques that he would learn over time like Num Beam, Num Bomb, Num Zzzter, and Numnum Smash (with Num Power Shield and Num Healing most likely making appearances as well), and he could summon the Super Big Num eventually, but the powered-up form, the Numnum Shield, and the dozens of random single-use gadgets were mostly removed.
And now that you know how his powers developed, here's some pictures so you can see how the way I drew him developed, too!
First is an attempt from earlier this year at copying how I drew him later on in 3rd grade (after some of the early "haven't decided on the details yet" weirdness--like having mini Numnums for hands in addition to his Numnum head--was phased out.) Unfortunately, I don't have any actual 3rd grade Supernum pictures that I'm aware of, so this will have to do.
Here's (part of) Supernum as I drew him in 2000 or 2001, during my first year or two at high school:
And here's a panel from the 2003-2004 Crappy World: Zyorudenu comics I drew, which were Supernum's last appearance until I tried to bring him back in 2008:
And finally here's a picture of him I painted, also from earlier this year, showing how I draw him now:
Though he's being drawn a hell of a lot better these days than he was back in the elementary school years, you can probably see from the above two pictures that the basic design of Supernum hasn't changed a whole lot. He's got a head that resembles the body of a Numnum (sans legs, feathers, or tail... which are features that weren't present on the original Numnum design), a humanoid lower body covered in full body armor that's mostly of an orange color (with the exception of his gloves and boots which are black), a cape with the Num Power symbol on it that's orange on the outside and red on the inside, and of course the legendary Numnum Sword, a blade with the properties of the super-metal known as snozzorium (though it's actually made up of super-concentrated Num Power rather than any sort of actual solid material.)
There have been some changes, though, even as the basic design stays pretty much the same.
His armor has changed from purely Power Rangers-style spandex to something halfway between that and metallic armor as time has gone on, as seen by the presence of a clear "heavier armored" area on his upper chest now. Ever since 5th or 6th grade this has been referred to as the "Num Armor." Speaking of his armor, he no longer has the English letter N on it anymore, with the random Earth letter finally being replaced by the Khurbyish symbol representing the same consonant sound (which is identical to the Num Power symbol he's always had on his cape) in mid to late high school.
The Numnum Sword has gotten a more unique design over time, shifting from "generic sword" in early drawings (or no sword at all, in the earliest of them all) to a long, semi-heavy, single-edged blade with a bit of a curve to the end starting around late 4th grade or early 5th grade. The sword's vaguely claw-like decorations were added around that time or shortly after. Overall, the Numnum Sword's design has been pretty consistent since around 6th grade, though now I'm drawing it with a longer handle since it's intended to be a weapon that can be used with either one or both hands.
His shoulder and knee pads probably appeared for the first time in late 4th or early 5th grade, originally just being drawn as dark-outlined circles with the letter "N" on them (a way of drawing them that stuck around all the way through high school, as you can see in the Crappy World: Zyorudenu panel) and eventually shifting to having small Num Power symbols on them instead of an N. In recent colored versions, they've been showing up as a dark, sometimes slightly reddish brown-black rather than just pure black, a color choice that has expanded to his gloves and boots as well. The Num Power symbols on them are red now, much like the ones on his armor and cape.
Sometime during the early high school years, I got a bit better at drawing his cape as an actual cape rather than this awkward blanket-like object dangling from... someplace behind him, maybe... and defying all sorts of laws of physics. The "cape fasteners" on his armor first started appearing in the later high school years, making his cape look even more cape-like. His cape has always had the Num Power symbol on it ever since I made it up (some very early pictures may have had a plain ol' N on both his cape and armor), though it may have briefly had an N on it for a while during the high school years when the Num Power symbol first appeared on his chest in place of the old N.
And finally, during the time between 2008 and today, he finally got a belt and a more normal-looking torso structure rather than the vague torso/leg transition shown in older drawings from elementary to high school. I haven't completely decided whether he should have a buckle on this belt or not; a drawing in the 2010 time range had him with an N on his belt, while the most recent drawings have no buckle at all.
=====================
Anyway... now that I've gone over Supernum's history... what I was originally going to talk about here. XD
I'm wondering if I should bring back Supernum in some form. I still kinda want to make a Supernum game/story/comic of some sort. I almost feel like dropping Supernum was part of where I went wrong with The K'hyurbhi Lands--when attempting to bring back the old Nummorro (minus some of the absurdity, like poop monsters and such, that existed in the earliest years when the world was still called "Numnum Land") and clear out all the poorly-thought-out new garbage that had accumulated in its place during my high school years, I somehow ended up not bringing back the character who was always the focus of my Numnums stories from the very beginning, instead focusing on some random Numnum, K'hyurbhi, and Blurby (okay, Upchukk the Blurby wasn't entirely random, he's an established character from the 5th/6th grade era. The other two are pretty much newbies in comparison, though.)
I'm not sure if I want everything to be the same as the old Supernum stories, though. In particular, making Supernum's human identity be basically... me... is something I'm not sure I want to keep around. Partly because that would mean I'd either have to figure out some way to connect the Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School story to a new Supernum story (which would mean that Eddie/Supernum would be 18+ years old in this new Supernum story, which is... not at all like the original where Eddie was a kid when he first became Supernum) or start a new alternate-universe sort of thing where the events of Alleghany Hell School don't happen and things are different in general. Which would mean I'd have two different versions of any character who appears in both the Fnrrf Ygm Schnish series and possible new Supernum series (like Eddie if I keep Eddie-as-Supernum after all, the Burijeoo queen Bridget, and some who appeared in The K'hyurbhi Lands who might not even count since I might just be ditching TKL entirely rather than trying to fit it in the same set of 40 nherbis as either FYS:AHS or a possible new Supernum story.)
I've toyed with the idea of someone else being Supernum before, of course. There were actually three Supernums in my old stories--the original Supernum, K'hyurbhi Supernum (originally called "Kirby Supernum"), and Blurby Supernum, their appearances different only in color scheme (original was orange/red/yellow, "K'hyurbhi" was blue/black, "Blurby" was white/silver/gold) and randomly named after two other Nummorrian species who had nothing to do with their Num Coins as far as I can remember. The Numnum/K'hyurbhi/Blurby trio was a recurring theme even back then, though, so that's probably why I did that with the Three Supernums too. I eventually decided that the identity of K'hyurbhi Supernum was to be a young martial artist named Luke, based on a kid I knew when I was very young; Blurby Supernum may have been a punk-looking guy named Charles (also based on someone I knew in the early elementary school years) under the armor, though it seemed in the games/stories where he appeared he didn't seem quite as okay with revealing his identity compared to the other two. Eddie, Luke, and Charles were three of the four kids who appeared in the Cowcocows stories I came up with in 2nd grade; the fourth kid, Mark, was mysteriously absent from all future stories. Possibly because the real-life Mark turned out to be kind of a jerk after 2nd grade ended, while Luke remained friends with me and Charles mysteriously vanished (...perhaps to go off and save the world while hidden inside the Numnum-headed armor of Blurby Supernum. The world may never know!)
The 2000s-era game ideas featured a few "future Supernums," one of which being a cat-like guy named Muyeo (who had the original Num Coin) and another being an unnamed half-Burijeoo (who ended up with the K'hyurbhi Supernum coin.) Who, if anyone, had the Blurby Supernum coin in the future is unknown.
In addition to the Three Supernums and future equivalents, there were also a couple of "extra" Supernums throughout the years. There was Edwin Supernum, an evil clone of Eddie with his own Supernum powers (color-coded black and gray with a Dark Num Smash move instead of the original Numnum Smash, of course), and Killer K'hyurbhi once transformed into "Super Killer K'hyurbhi" using a copied Num Coin (with help from a Num Power infusion from an artifact known as the Red Num, as K'hyurbhis are naturally lacking Num Power and couldn't transform into Supernum forms normally.) On Gumakia, a moon of Brijetoo, one of the mushroom inhabitants had his own Supernum form known as the "Golden Mushroom," which caused him to grow a pair of arms and wield a pretty big sword. Eddie's little sister Julia even had her own Supernum-like forms, first the wimpy "Super Julia" (which seemed to only give her low-level Num Armor rather than any actual powers) and later a "Julia Dragon" form which turned her into a vaguely dragony critter with a human head and power similar to that of Supernum's, at least in terms of physical strength. There was also an abandoned plot point in Return of the Coraudos which involved another Supernum appearing in order to save Eddie-Supernum from a losing battle with Coraudo Slug. This "new Supernum" seemed to have actually taken Eddie's Num Power rather than having his(?) own, as the story involved a note appearing in Eddie's house which said that he "can't be Supernum anymore." I never finished this story ("you can't be Supernum anymore" was the cutoff point, I'm fairly sure), so I'm not sure where I was going with this, but I vaguely remember that this new Supernum wasn't entirely good and his(?) secret identity might not have been somebody who was on the good guys' side at all. Looking back, this seems like it would be a great place to reintroduce that fourth kid Mark who went missing and have him be a neutral/bordering-on-evil Supernum who (as nice as it was for him to help out with the Coraudos) needs to be overthrown before he can ruin the reputation of the Supernum name or something like that... though I can't imagine him inexplicably knowing how to steal Num Power or being competent enough to handle Coraudo Slug where the original Supernum had failed (...maybe Supernum weakened him just enough in the previous fight that this new Supernum could fight him off?)
I also wonder what to do with the Three Supernums. I like the concept, but "K'hyurbhi Supernum" and "Blurby Supernum" are pretty bad and not-particularly-fitting names (I tried to make them apply a bit better in the 2000s era by giving them K'hyurbhi and Blurby themed attacks--Blurby Bomb, Kihlah Smash, and so on--but it was still just weird that Num Power would give them attacks themed after creatures that can't even use Num Power!), and I'm thinking that if I use them again I'll have to mess with their designs so they're not just "Supernum, but with different colors and symbols" like they were before. The different color schemes can stay I think (I particularly like the blue armor/black inside of cape colors for K'hyurbhi Supernum), but something else about them needs to change so they're not just recolors. Maybe one can be taller and thinner, one can be shorter and bulkier, and the armor design can change around a bit to match those features? And of course they could have different weapons; I did give K'hyurbhi Supernum the Staff of Parupoo in the 2000s-era games after Kayana was defeated, but... I'm thinking that's a bit odd and un-fitting for him. So a staff yeah, but not that staff anymore.
Any thoughts from people who aren't me? I know I've had a couple people express interest in Supernum in the past year and want to know when/if I'll be making anything that features him, so I have to wonder if anyone has any ideas after reading all this.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Complete Okédoké has been released to the public!
Yep--just like the title says, the complete 6-chapter version of Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana has been finished, packed up into a ZIP file, and uploaded so that all of you people can finally download and play the thing!
Slime Salad download page
Castle Paradox download page
These both have the exact same version of the game, by the way--I just have 'em both on here because the game is downloadable from two different places (in case one site goes down or something, I guess.) Slime Salad is usually more reliable for fast downloading, but it also seems to be the target of hackers or the victim of weird website crashes more often (probably because it's just a more active site in general) so it may be down every once and a while.
And while you're waiting for Okédoké! to download (...you are downloading it, right?), here's some more screenshots that I don't think I've posted here yet:
Slime Salad download page
Castle Paradox download page
These both have the exact same version of the game, by the way--I just have 'em both on here because the game is downloadable from two different places (in case one site goes down or something, I guess.) Slime Salad is usually more reliable for fast downloading, but it also seems to be the target of hackers or the victim of weird website crashes more often (probably because it's just a more active site in general) so it may be down every once and a while.
And while you're waiting for Okédoké! to download (...you are downloading it, right?), here's some more screenshots that I don't think I've posted here yet:
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| Gravestones in El Pueblecito (and also Frogbucket) are now readable! |
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| High in the mysterious Canadian mountains... |
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| The second floor of the King's Castle now has NPCs. |
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| New scene added to Chapter 1. But where, and how...? |
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| A new character who appears in an optional segment of Chapter 6. |
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| A new hidden area in Chapter 2. Wonder who lives here. |
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| The Wizdum Guy, who gives vague advice about what to do next. |
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| Yep... you can now trick the Alzheimer's priest into standing on the wrong side of his desk. |
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| The Mayor of Beaverfoot's quiz has been drastically expanded. |
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| The Scud Squeegee has gotten an upgrade. Equip other XIII/Scud items to make it better. |
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| And finally, the members of the Swarm can now be found hanging around after you've fought them all. |
Saturday, August 30, 2014
An Okédoké draws near!
Yep... the final version of Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana is coming up pretty soon now. I've been working on fixing bugs, touching up various things, and even adding in some new stuff in response to some of the feedback I've gotten from my playtesters (who did a great job, by the way--some of the glitches they caught are things I wouldn't have even thought of testing!), and as of today almost everything is done.
I've just about finished some overhauling of the Mayor of Beaverfoot's quiz game (he now asks if you want to play rather than throwing you right into it and has different stuff to say depending on whether you're a first-timer or if you lost once and then came back, and the quiz itself is drastically expanded--there's a third round and there are now seven categories instead of just three, and two of the three categories per round are chosen semi-randomly every time you play so you won't get the same categories/questions over and over again anymore.) Next up is making it possible for you to run his Mountain Dew stash completely dry, which results in him giving you a sidequest up into the mountains where he's hidden his super-secret stash of experimental new Mountain Dew that won't be available to the general public until 2010. This is primarily as a failsafe in case you run through the mayor's main stash and then use up too much of the Mountain Dew without fueling the Hippie Battle Van (the game won't allow you to drink this special Mountain Dew at all, so you can't waste it... making it impossible to get permanently stuck in Beaverfoot), but you can go ahead and do the sidequest whether you actually need more Mountain Dew or not.
After that, all that's left are a couple of very minor bugfixes (two of which I might not bother with, as they are incredibly minor) and possibly another sidequest in the secret prison village of Chapter 5. I have an idea for that, which has actually expanded into more of an idea as I write this... but it depends on whether or not I have time. If all goes well today, I should have both of these little sidequests done so I can test them out tomorrow and then, right before the end of August, finally release the complete version of Okédoké!
I've just about finished some overhauling of the Mayor of Beaverfoot's quiz game (he now asks if you want to play rather than throwing you right into it and has different stuff to say depending on whether you're a first-timer or if you lost once and then came back, and the quiz itself is drastically expanded--there's a third round and there are now seven categories instead of just three, and two of the three categories per round are chosen semi-randomly every time you play so you won't get the same categories/questions over and over again anymore.) Next up is making it possible for you to run his Mountain Dew stash completely dry, which results in him giving you a sidequest up into the mountains where he's hidden his super-secret stash of experimental new Mountain Dew that won't be available to the general public until 2010. This is primarily as a failsafe in case you run through the mayor's main stash and then use up too much of the Mountain Dew without fueling the Hippie Battle Van (the game won't allow you to drink this special Mountain Dew at all, so you can't waste it... making it impossible to get permanently stuck in Beaverfoot), but you can go ahead and do the sidequest whether you actually need more Mountain Dew or not.
After that, all that's left are a couple of very minor bugfixes (two of which I might not bother with, as they are incredibly minor) and possibly another sidequest in the secret prison village of Chapter 5. I have an idea for that, which has actually expanded into more of an idea as I write this... but it depends on whether or not I have time. If all goes well today, I should have both of these little sidequests done so I can test them out tomorrow and then, right before the end of August, finally release the complete version of Okédoké!
Thursday, August 21, 2014
...well, that really sucks...
It seems like, after all the work I've put into it, the FnrrfYgmSchnish wiki is dead--the site that was hosting it (wikkii.com) seems to be down, possibly for good, and it's taken all of its hosted wikis down with it. This means that I've lost every last bit of information that was contained on the site, with only a few exceptions--the "Fnrrf Ygm Schnish timeline" page (which I saved a copy of on my computer a while back before the site went down) and my old Supernum stories from the elementary school days (which I had saved on my computer all along rather than only putting them on the wiki.)
That means that, aside from the stuff mentioned in the timeline, my memory is the only remaining record of a buttload of information that I'd put on there. I'm guessing that I'll have to start writing down every last thing that I can remember about my characters into a file (or multiple files) on my computer and using that. I probably should've done that first rather than putting it all on the wiki, honestly... maybe I'll make this stuff available in some way eventually (...maybe a Nummorro book or something? I know several people I've talked to in real life have suggested that people would buy such a thing), but for now the focus is getting it all down before years pass and I start to forget minor details, like what's happened with a lot of the stuff I was working on in elementary/middle/high school already.
That means that, aside from the stuff mentioned in the timeline, my memory is the only remaining record of a buttload of information that I'd put on there. I'm guessing that I'll have to start writing down every last thing that I can remember about my characters into a file (or multiple files) on my computer and using that. I probably should've done that first rather than putting it all on the wiki, honestly... maybe I'll make this stuff available in some way eventually (...maybe a Nummorro book or something? I know several people I've talked to in real life have suggested that people would buy such a thing), but for now the focus is getting it all down before years pass and I start to forget minor details, like what's happened with a lot of the stuff I was working on in elementary/middle/high school already.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Would-be TKL remaker?? Well, that's odd.
Just found an odd comment posted to my talk page on the OHRRPGCE's wiki the other day. Someone apparently wants me to "give them a download" of The Kirby Lands (the old, terrible game I made back when I was in early high school) so that they can remake it.
First of all... what!? Really? Someone wants to remake The Kirby Lands, of all things?? Why? What is there in that craptastic old game that someone would see and say "yeah, I want to make my own version of this thing?" I'm confused.
Second of all... the game is freely available for download on two different sites. Was this person not able to find it, or what? Or did they mean a download of the game file without the password so they could edit it? Either way... odd.
I'm somewhat suspicious of this, for various reason. I'm also extremely hesitant about the thought of letting someone remake one of my games, especially one so heavily saturated in Nummorrian critters at TKL (even if it does only have the old versions of them I was drawing in high school.) The fact that the person's username has "Kirby" in it and their initial posting was just titled "Kirby" rather than "The Kirby Lands" or anything similar makes me suspect that they have mistaken TKL for a fangame of Nintendo's Kirby series, despite the fact that the only similarity whatsoever is that there are round things that look like Kirby in it (...yeah, they are called "Kirbys" in the game, but that's only because I never went back and fixed up the game after deciding on the name change to "K'hyurbhi" around 2003. There is no in-universe connection with Nintendo's Kirby... though one enemy, Kracko, does make a cameo appearance as a random encounter in one area.)
I'm worried that if I do let them do their own remake, suddenly everyone who's not a Numnum or Blurby will find themselves dyed pink for no good reason. "Pink Killer K'hyurbhi" is a thing that should not be (so much so that in the Mushroom Doom card game I made back in 5th-6th grade, when I randomly made the other "Kirbys" this weird dark pink color, Killer Kirby alone kept his original white color scheme.) I've already run into problems with people hurring and durring the by-now-horribly-overdone "looks like Kirby" complaint at one of my more recent games... someone else making a game where the characters actually look just like Kirby would probably just make that worse. Even worse would be the possibility of them schnorking the game around to include actual Kirby series characters, or somehow trying to fuse the two settings together into some impossible abomination. Part 2 is terrible as-is, but it'd be even worse if they tried to shoehorn Dark Matter in there in place of the generic demon final boss.
Basically... the idea of someone else using my characters just seems like a terrible idea, so it's extremely unlikely that I'd agree to it if that's what they have in mind. Supernum, Robert, Natasha, most of the bosses, and so on will have to be removed from the game or changed to someone else. Anything Nummorrian or First Nherbi in origin (Numnums, Blurbys, Beefoes, Yuckow Foods...) would have to be removed from the game or changed to something else. Even a lot of the items would need to change, since I can't have someone else making a game with Yums, Numkiller swords, shickers, and Chiba Balls!
I suppose if they just want to borrow the general "outline" of the game (three kids sent away from their families in hopes that they'll be able to beat the evil overlord type guy later, start in the northwest and travel through a cave and sewer, fight some weird guy in his house in the mountains, pass through the overthrown kingdom but before saving it go to a school and recruit some extra characters, then go save that kingdom before chasing the boss to his home in the northeastern desert... and then to another world for the should-be-final battle), I could probably go along with that... but if you need to come up with your own characters and your own enemies and everything to fill in the empty shell of someone else's game where all the parts you can't use were removed, why not just... make your own original game?
This is so weird.
First of all... what!? Really? Someone wants to remake The Kirby Lands, of all things?? Why? What is there in that craptastic old game that someone would see and say "yeah, I want to make my own version of this thing?" I'm confused.
Second of all... the game is freely available for download on two different sites. Was this person not able to find it, or what? Or did they mean a download of the game file without the password so they could edit it? Either way... odd.
I'm somewhat suspicious of this, for various reason. I'm also extremely hesitant about the thought of letting someone remake one of my games, especially one so heavily saturated in Nummorrian critters at TKL (even if it does only have the old versions of them I was drawing in high school.) The fact that the person's username has "Kirby" in it and their initial posting was just titled "Kirby" rather than "The Kirby Lands" or anything similar makes me suspect that they have mistaken TKL for a fangame of Nintendo's Kirby series, despite the fact that the only similarity whatsoever is that there are round things that look like Kirby in it (...yeah, they are called "Kirbys" in the game, but that's only because I never went back and fixed up the game after deciding on the name change to "K'hyurbhi" around 2003. There is no in-universe connection with Nintendo's Kirby... though one enemy, Kracko, does make a cameo appearance as a random encounter in one area.)
I'm worried that if I do let them do their own remake, suddenly everyone who's not a Numnum or Blurby will find themselves dyed pink for no good reason. "Pink Killer K'hyurbhi" is a thing that should not be (so much so that in the Mushroom Doom card game I made back in 5th-6th grade, when I randomly made the other "Kirbys" this weird dark pink color, Killer Kirby alone kept his original white color scheme.) I've already run into problems with people hurring and durring the by-now-horribly-overdone "looks like Kirby" complaint at one of my more recent games... someone else making a game where the characters actually look just like Kirby would probably just make that worse. Even worse would be the possibility of them schnorking the game around to include actual Kirby series characters, or somehow trying to fuse the two settings together into some impossible abomination. Part 2 is terrible as-is, but it'd be even worse if they tried to shoehorn Dark Matter in there in place of the generic demon final boss.
Basically... the idea of someone else using my characters just seems like a terrible idea, so it's extremely unlikely that I'd agree to it if that's what they have in mind. Supernum, Robert, Natasha, most of the bosses, and so on will have to be removed from the game or changed to someone else. Anything Nummorrian or First Nherbi in origin (Numnums, Blurbys, Beefoes, Yuckow Foods...) would have to be removed from the game or changed to something else. Even a lot of the items would need to change, since I can't have someone else making a game with Yums, Numkiller swords, shickers, and Chiba Balls!
I suppose if they just want to borrow the general "outline" of the game (three kids sent away from their families in hopes that they'll be able to beat the evil overlord type guy later, start in the northwest and travel through a cave and sewer, fight some weird guy in his house in the mountains, pass through the overthrown kingdom but before saving it go to a school and recruit some extra characters, then go save that kingdom before chasing the boss to his home in the northeastern desert... and then to another world for the should-be-final battle), I could probably go along with that... but if you need to come up with your own characters and your own enemies and everything to fill in the empty shell of someone else's game where all the parts you can't use were removed, why not just... make your own original game?
This is so weird.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Burijeoo and their names
The Burijeoo are an unusual species of humanoid creatures with gooey bodies, long hair, and razor-sharp claws. They are generally fairly tall in comparison to humans, though their height (like many things about their appearance) varies depending on their age and which stage they have reached.
The Burijeoo homeworld is Brijetoo, a world covered mainly by shallow oceans and small landmasses dotted with caves. Much of the planet was badly damaged in a war that took place 90,000 years ago, and to this day most surface water is unsafe to drink, forcing the Burijeoo to rely on underground springs and complex filtering devices just to survive. It is the condition of their planet that forces the Burijeoo to constantly search the nherbis for a new place to live, pushing certain extreme factions to attempt invasions of other worlds.
-- Burijeoo page, Fnrrf Ygm Schnish wiki
EDIT: Note that since the site hosting the FYS wiki has died, those wiki links above will no longer work. I have replaced the links to pictures hosted on the wiki so this page is still mostly intact, though!
Yep... for some reason while I was randomly walking around in town today, I got an idea to write a blog post about the Burijeoo. Specifically, their names, how I came up with them, and recurring word-fragments that show up in them. I'm not sure why this particular topic popped into my head, but it did, so I figured "why not?" and went ahead and typed this up.
Yep... for some reason while I was randomly walking around in town today, I got an idea to write a blog post about the Burijeoo. Specifically, their names, how I came up with them, and recurring word-fragments that show up in them. I'm not sure why this particular topic popped into my head, but it did, so I figured "why not?" and went ahead and typed this up.
Anyway... for those of you who might not know, here's a bit of history on the Burijeoo so you won't be completely confused by this. You could just read the wiki page I linked above, I guess, but I'll probably go into a lot more detail on some things here. The Burijeoo are an alien species that I made up all the way back in 5th grade. They weren't called "Burijeoo" at the time, of course; originally I called them "Bridgetoids" and they were basically made up as a spoof of one of my classmates at the time. Shouldn't be hard to guess what her name was, considering the name I gave the alien species that she had unwillingly inspired. The original Bridgetoids were kind of dumb, honestly--they basically just looked like a bunch of little clones of the person they were based on, with their only real defining features being "long, red hair" and "sharp claws." It's probably not that surprising that I only had one actual Bridgetoid character who had a name back then (the queen of the entire species, who was based on... well, that should be pretty obvious by now.)
Sometime after that point, I decided to actually expand on them a bit and ended up with the idea that their "looks like a human girl but with claws" form was actually a disguise, and that their true forms were different. I had already drawn the slug-with-a-girl-head infant Bridgetoids (and already named them "Snuzzoos") by this point, so when I started coming up with the other Bridgetoid stages the earlier ones ended up kind of similar--their heads still looked about the same (except that their eyes were now glowing yellow and they had no other visible features most of the time--even their mouths were only sometimes drawn), but they now had green, gooey bodies which could melt into goo so they could fit into small spaces or slip under doors, with even longer claws than before. For some reason, I randomly based their Stage 3, Stage 4, and Stage 5 forms on toys that I had around the time--Stage 3 ended up being some kind of crab monster, Stage 4 was a baby Godzilla, and Stage 5 was one of the dinosaur-things from the arcade game Primal Rage. Stage 6, however, was an original design--the picture above has a Stage 6 Burijeoo in the back, the one with the really dark red hair and layer of nearly black, super-strong exoskeleton over her entire body. The design for Stage 6 hasn't really changed much since then, aside from being drawn a lot better now than it was back in... 1996 or 1997 or whenever it was that I first drew that form. Of course, I have gone back and redesigned Stages 3, 4, and 5 to better fit as "in-between" points between the gooey, mostly-harmless Stage 2 and scary, armored Stage 6 rather than randomly changing into entirely different creatures three times in a row. If I'm remembering right, those redesigns happened sometime around the year 2000 or maybe 2001; whenever it was, I do know that by the time I was working on some of my old OHRRPGCE games I had already switched over to something that was much closer to the current designs. Speaking of that, here's the current designs in order, from Snuzzoo all the way up to Stage 6:
Now on to what I wanted to write about in the first place: Burijeoo names, how I came up with them, some very "how names tend to work"-ish patterns I've noticed in them even though at first I pretty much was just making up whatever rather than thinking about making them work as part of a whole language, and even how you can "Burijeoo-ify" your own name! Well, okay, no guarantees on that last one (I haven't come up with official "Burijeoo versions" of every name, after all... and if you're male, it may be harder since there hasn't been much need for male Burijeoo names for most of the past 90,000 years or so.)
Okay then. Burijeoo names! First of all, "Burijeoo" isn't really the Burijeoo word for themselves, or at least it wasn't what they called themselves originally; that's actually a Khurbyish term, literally meaning "red-haired ones" (buri = red, je = hair, oo = general term for people or living things of any sort), which was what Khurbyish-speakers called them after first encountering the species. Though hair colors other than red are possible for Burijeoo (blonde being pretty common, brown being somewhat rare, and more unusual colors showing up occasionally), presumably the first Khurbyish-speakers who bumped into them saw a lot of red hair and decided that was one of their most notable features. The Burijeoo originally called themselves "Brijuo" (also the name of their ancient language), though they have adopted "Burijeoo" and the Khurbyish language it came from since then.
As mentioned above, originally I only had one actual named Burijeoo character. And she was just named... well, Bridget. She did have a brief a name-change in 2004 (becoming "Burije" instead), until I decided just a few years later that having a species called "Burijeoo" with a queen named "Burije" was only slightly less cheesy than having a species named "Bridgetoids" with a queen named "Bridget"... since then, the character has been Bridget (though technically, as a name of Brijuo origin, it should be "Brijet"... she spells it the human way to better blend in here on Earth) and her species has been the Burijeoo.
In the early 2000s, I started to come up with more Burijeoo characters. At first, I for some reason decided to just give them all human names; this was before the "Bridget to Burije" change I mentioned a couple sentences ago, of course. The second Burijeoo character added to my stories/games/etc. was based on my younger sister and just called "Julia." (I still have a character based on my sister, but she is no longer a Burijeoo as of my most recent games/stories/etc.) At some point I finally realized it was kind of silly for my species of scary, clawed alien invaders to randomly have normal human girl's names, though (at least if those were their real names, anyway, and not just aliases they were going by in order to blend in with the human population!), and I started to change things around a bit.
The method for making new Burijeoo names, at least in cases of Burijeoo based on real people, was basically "take a real name, distort it around a little bit, and make it end in AI." I'm not sure why "ai" ended up being the favorite name-ending syllable for the Burijeoo, but that "rule" has pretty much stuck--there are a lot of Burijeoo names that end with some variation, including plain "-ai" names as well as "-jai," "-zai," and even "-juai." That last one was probably the first one I actually thought of, as the earliest "real Burijeoo names" that I remember having made up were Lojuai and Mejuai. Basically, this was how the development of those names went:
- Take a real name. In this case, the name of a person that I was basing a Burijeoo character on.
- Drop off part of it. Starting with "Meghan" and trimming off the second syllable, this leaves you with just plain "Me."
- Add some weird-sounding mix of letters. And this is where "Me" becomes "Mejuai." The "Me" here is pronounced as "may," by the way, not "meh" and definitely not like the English word "me."
- Amnai (Amanda)
- Amai (Amy)
- Asuljai (Ashley and all variations in spelling)
- Kilai (Christina, Christine, and variations)
- Syai (Sierra, Cierra, etc.)
- Cuuyiai (Courtney)
- Neljuai (Danielle)
- Jizuzai (Jessica)
- Kreiai (Kayla)
- Laruai (Laura)
- Lojuai (Lauren)
- Maruai (Mary, Maria, etc.)
- Mejuai (Meghan, Megan, etc.)
- Meljuai (Melanie)
- Marujai (Michelle)
- Pojuai (Paula, Pauline)
- Erruai (Rebecca)
- Sazuai (Susan, Sue, etc.)
I think I was just going through my yearbook or something and coming up with Burijeoo versions of a bunch of random people's names, because I'm fairly sure I never knew anyone with some of the names listed above back then. But anyway, out of that bunch, only the names Asuljai, Kilai, Lojuai, and Mejuai were ever actually used for a character (three of which were at least loosely based on a real person who had the matching human name, one of which was just made up from nowhere and only had a name from this list by coincidence.) Out of that bunch, only two of them still exist as Burijeoo (Lojuai and Mejuai have been re-written as plain ol' humans since then, and as such no longer have Burijeoo names), and of those two only Asuljai has been drawn by me anytime even remotely recently. Here's a picture of her, drawn maybe around late 2010 or early 2011, that shows her in both her true Burijeoo form (Stage 4, in her case) and her human disguise:.
So... yeah, there's a lot of examples of "-ai" names, and they've been around for a pretty long time. Since then, though, I've only made up a couple more "-ai" names--in 2004 there was Lomejai (who was actually a fused form of Lojuai and Mejuai, hence the combined name), and sometime years later than that I ended up giving the name "Iilyezai" to a character I made up many years before that who was originally nameless.
Not all Burijeoo names end in "-ai," though. That was mostly a thing I did with those Burijeoo names that were derived from real-life human names; Burijeoo whose names were unrelated to any real person's name were a bit different (though, as mentioned with Iilyezai above, sometimes even those ended up being "-ai" names.) A couple of examples from the earliest batch of Burijeoo names I can remember were Uyu and Tirenal (which, funnily enough, I seem to have originally intended to be pronounced exactly like "Tylenol" except with an R instead of the first L. Not sure why.) More recently, there've also been some other names that don't fit into the "-ai" pattern, like Gyaralia, Gura, Meija, Nazala, and Uraaiynu. These names sort of seem to form another pattern--that if a Burijeoo name doesn't end in "-ai," there's a good chance it will end in "-a" instead. Uraaiynu is an exception... but then again, her name is considered strange even by Burijeoo standards--she's actually only half-Burijeoo, and her mother named her using the English alphabet rather than the traditional Brijuo alphabet (which Burijeoo use in order to write the Khurbyish language; Brijuo as its own language is basically dead at this point.) Which would explain the odd spelling--it's what you get when you ask an alien who's used to one alphabet to come up with a name in a different alphabet, while still sort of making an attempt to have it sound like an alien name. Oh, and here's a picture of her (drawn way back in 2008, so unfortunately it's not the greatest, but I don't have a new one):
I've even come up with one male Burijeoo name--Momuju, the name that belongs to the only male (half-)Burijeoo known to still exist. Here's a picture of him:
He's the only one left mostly because male Burijeoo have not really existed for a long time--the same war that ruined their planet 90,000 years ago also resulted in the vast majority of the male population dying off. There are no male "pureblood" Burijeoo left now. The only reason male half-Burijeoo are possible is the involvement of a father from another species, and also magic (literally, Burijeoo use magic to disguise themselves as other species... and crossbreeding wouldn't work if they were in their true forms at the time.)
But yeah... since Momuju is the only male of his kind to have ever made an appearance, I suppose it might be safe to go ahead and assume that "-ju" is the male equivalent of "-jai," and that other male Burijeoo names would probably end in something like "-u" or "-ju" pretty often. And though I didn't include it among the many "-ai" names that I listed on here, the name Momuju actually did originate from the list mentioned above--appropriately enough, as the equivalent of a name I've seen used by both guys and girls (Morgan.) Assuming that the gender-neutralness of the name carries over to the Burijeoo version even though it ends in "-ju" instead of "-jai," his parents would've been pretty smart to give him that name, since it would be the kind of name that could be mentioned to other Burijeoo without necessarily giving away the fact that he isn't female (well, at least until they see him in person or hear his voice, anyway. Then it would be kind of obvious.)
So I guess now the guys should be able to "Burijeoo-ize" their names too if they want. So I guess "Robert" could turn into "Robaju" or "Rabeju" or something like that, and a name like "Timothy" could become "Timoju" or "Timaju" or maybe something like "Timeu" (tih-may-oo) if you go with "-u" being a possible name-ending for the guys (instead of just "-ju"), kind of like "-ai" is for the girls. These newly-made guys' names do sound a bit awkward to me compared to the girls' names, though, and it seems like "add -u or -ju onto a name-fragment" might not work so well with shorter names... so maybe the method of converting them needs a bit of work. Fortunately, I doubt I'll ever need to come up with many male Burijeoo names (unless I ever end up doing something in the "90,000+ years ago" time period when a population of them still existed, anyway), so I don't have to worry too much about that. XD
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