hello! i'm syd of @lyril 🎉 and i do all kinds of stupid and gay shit
welcome to a VERY long over-due side blog! i got into camp lazlo on joe murray's birthday in 2020 and for some god foresaken reason it's stuck in my brain enough to have yearly months-long revisiting sessions, so, here we are! (even when i have other fixations for a while, i just have so many thoughts that it worms it way back in anyway, so, stay tuned if i'm inactive for a while...)
this will be an archive of old and new art, misc. commentary, and my ramblings about the ideas i have, that, at this point, are sort of a retool/continuity reboot/whatever of the show in my head... this is mostly a space to get out all the stuff that's been marinating in my brain forever cus i never finish anything, and just whatever other low effort stuff that isn't going anywhere else any time soon. one day, i will finish the big folder of documents i've been working on and share them here and everything will make sense ❤️
my main art blog is @vizabel, and i also have the blogs @scoutmaster-lumpus and @slinkman that i may or may not return to one day as well if my team finishes workshopping the Situation
more info (about what i do and how i approach things) under the cut!
QUICK GENERAL NOTES
i can be known to take some Creative Liberties on occasion, but most of the time, a lot of what i do is still heavily based in what the show's given us, just a little more Modern-Cartoon-Esque in tone and emotionally complexity. at any given time i will either be expanding upon, re-arranging, or taking what's actually in the show a little too seriously OR completely making shit up, occasionally in the pursuit of something else/more expansive. if i don't like how something is or it just doesn't happen to work any more, there's a good chance i might just toss it out, considering the show is also no stranger to keeping an inconsistent continuity and freely retcon-ing stuff. so, while the sense of "canon" is still to be malleable here, i will note i am usually a big stickler for paying close attention to "canon" in the first place and have spent the past while just trying to make what we have in the show make sense and i am only now just sort of branching off into my own thing. in practice, i still want to maintain the overall vibe, cartoonishness, and other elements of everything that make the show what it is! i want the majority of these characters to still feel and to speak as close to they do in the show... as best as i can, at least. even so, it's best to still consider it all to have a personal flair to it in the end, of course :)
as such, i don't really consider all of this (or at least the individual parts) an "AU" even if you could definitely still consider it one, mostly because i am approaching this to at least some degree like i am actually on a Project here (aside from my own boughts of self-indulgence!). in a way, i think its sort of a "practice run" to me — if i were to actually plan out and write my Own series, what would it be like? what kinds of skills would i learn by figuring it out? i'm still a novice writer, so i'd like to think by studying i am giving myself some experience and practice, even in a casual setting without all the actual technicalities and limitations that would come with it
and do still take the stuff i say here with a Grain of Salt for now (especially if its tagged as old art — a lot of my approach has changed and is in progress since then) because it's not always set in stone when in such an early stage, and i'm frequently adjusting things... the art here will not always be up to par, mostly due to the fact that a lot of it is quite a bit old at this point and because a lot of the time i just need to get the concepts out and share them, and i'm trying to relax more about that exact thing, so please excuse me in my momentary stress about doing so... i'm trying to just have this be apart of my little Exercise Zone is all! additionally... this fandom is small enough that i'm not sure if anyone would, but if you want to draw any of my designs, i'd prefer if you asked first, just because i'm not always fully satisfied with them and they may be soon due for a redesign already.
in terms of focus, Overall, i am thinking up what's basically a re-imagining of the actual series, except with more of a sense of clearly defined character arcs and development for some of the cast, exploring underutilized characters and dynamics, and occasionally re-doing certain concepts in a better way. however, one of my favorite areas to play around in is the Pre-Story and Post-Story concepts, which can include anything from backstory to what the characters will be like in the future, as well as concepts for everyone's family! i find that stuff fun to explore as well as important to getting a grasp on the characters
currently, i'm in the process of working on a ton of documents full of scattered ideas for the majority of the characters. if you have a specific character you're wondering about let me know...
do keep in mind that the adult characters are my favs, and i am also an adult myself — and this is a blog for a children's television program from nearly 2 decades ago, so while there isn't anything crazy going on here, i might be a little unwell or make a crude/suggestive joke here and there. furthermore, i'm not all that into shipping the kids, but that's not really got much to do with anything, it's just not my personal focus outside of a very few exceptions :) (i might have more interest in "future" stuff in that sense)
i choose to Ignore the finale (and have since day one) just cus i think it's stupid and unsatisfying and its agonizing when its the Only thing people ever bring up in regards to the show aaand i'm doing my own thing anyway (no hate to tom kenny for thinking it up though LOVE YOU KING ❤️) let's all hate the finale... together! 🤝
and, finally, PLEASE send me asks if you wanna...! about what i draw or plans for characters or the show or what you're curious about yourself or whatever else that's on your mind. i will THROW up. i'm NICE and i LOVE TO TALK and i am ALWAYS STARVING FOR CAMP LAZLO INDULGENCE... i have thousands and thousands of words i've got to get through, and i have no problem talking about some of it early if prompted. alternatively, you may absolutely send to me (or talk to me about) your OWN ideas and headcanons if you are fine with me playing along with them too! i work best by absorbing bits of other people's ideas first, so i would be glad to hear or bounce off of them. i can get a little bit carried away talking about my own ideas, but, please, don't take that for not wanting to hear anything from the outside — i still need sustenance to live!
IMPORTANT LINKS
posts that i consider important will be marked with a bean emoji 🫘 ! however, here is a little quick directory and preview of the posts you will eventually find there:
masterpost of official content-related links
overview of general character(/ization) ideas
setting & worldbuilding
introductions to OCs
information on the 80s camp kidney cast
the lumpus and slinkman relationship timeline and analysis
post-finale storylines
the lumpus "redemption arc" process
QUESTIONS THAT ARE NOT FREQUENTLY ASKED BUT COULD BE!
"HOW DID YOUR INTEREST START?"
my Honest answer: i got shown chef mcmuesli and thought he was Cute. and for some reason watching the show revolutionized my friend group, so here we finally are a few years later
"WHY CAMP LAZLO OF ALL THINGS?"
i think camp lazlo is a really funny cartoon that has a lot of good episodes, and even though i don't quite think it's the best one in the world, or even that i've seen in my own limited pool of media, i do still believe it's a painfully underrated show anyway and the "personal attachement" and "fun" factors are always the best sort of measure in that sense!
it's a little bit ("a little bit") of a Playground Area for me as well, where most of all i like the huge potential and the aesthetics of everything, but i also just disproportionately love some of these characters! which is partially my own fault. so i'm overall fine with just sort of fucking around... joe murray was talking about how the summer camp setting already provided an infinite supply of ideas, and i think that's really true! i LOVE the setting to Death and while i don't remember a lot of it, i feel VERY lucky to have been a girl scout as a kid
as you soon may notice, i am Way too invested in lumpus and slinkman and they are my wives for some reason ❤️ so, unfortunately, a good chunk of the stuff on here will likely be focused on them specifically because they have clung to me like a leech
"DO YOU KNOW WHY THE COLORS IN MY COPY OF THE SHOW ARE ALL FUCKED UP?"
Mmmaybe!
"HAVE YOU WATCHED ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE OR LETS GO LUNA?"
i've only seen a couple episodes of each! if i ever watch some of them though i figure i'll post about them here too. the classic icon of my art blog is a minor/background character from RML with a couple lines!
"SO WHY DO YOU LIKE SLINKMAN AND LUMPUS SO MUCH ANYWAY? WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING TO THAT MOOSE AND SLUG???"
that's just how it goes sometimes, isn't it?
i actually have a history of enjoying similar pairings of characters — lumpus and slinkman, burns and smithers, dedede and escargoon... every single one of these is a boss and assistant who are voiced by the same person, which is Wild!
but, i've accidentally dug myself into a very deep investment hole on account of All That Shit I Just Made Up, and just have a lot of fun playing around with them as characters. dysfunctional and complicated dynamics are some of my favorites to explore, and they have a lot going on — two characters i'm already super into individually, a childhood friends to life partners dynamic, potential to explore both ends of the health spectrum and the story i can play with there character-development wise for both of them while still keeping it interesting to me, some weird gay shit going on, and two characters who just bounce off each other well. at this point i just like to see them Exist in the Same Vicinity at All 🫶 for a long time now i've felt like there's been an empty space here to fill with focus of them!
i really do just like character analysis so the bigger documents i'm working on are sort of an idealized writing guide/story outline for myself. it's a very long process (the document i started chipping away at is like... over 20k by now, but its been a few years in the making) and after i finish laying it all out, i might turn it into a fic one day! for now, i've just got too much else on my hands to finish up first, so you'll get to see some of it in its raw conceptual form, while i try to get myself to work on cleaning it all up, at least
and here's a gay little timeline JUST FOR YOU of the Main stuff i have going on. i will make a bigger post(s) explaining things in the future
(i'm still playing with the exacts of this too so several time frames on here are subject to change, as per usual) (it'll be updated again when i'm active)
"DO YOU HAVE A TOYHOU.SE OR ANYTHING FOR YOUR OCS?"
i do, but since i take so long to finish and finalize anything, i have most things of that nature shut down until i revisit them. and if there's any interest i might work on getting the finished stuff i have back online at least. either way, any information about any characters will be in my DocumentsTM and talked about on here when i clean it up either way
"WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE SLUG WOMEN BANNER?"
i made it for the slinkman blog, i just think it's annoying when non-mammals have tits and i have a love-hate relationship with camp lazlo character design ❤️ and it's just really funny to put it there tbh
