Thank you again for reviewing my rust blood oc. I loved it! Now I have Mekani! Thank you for reviewing her too!
Name: Mekani Saripa. I created her awhile ago so I’m blanking with what her name means.
I’m gonna go ahead and guess Mekani comes from Mekanism, the Swedish word for Mechanism. Which is fitting. It also happens to be the brand name of a marketing company, which focuses on selling products Through Storytelling, which I think could fit her trying to seem more confident/cooler than she is, because of how she dislikes her own “boringness.” She’s trying to Sell Herself to the public.
I can’t find a meaning for Saripa, though. So how about we change it to Torxar? It’s a reference to the Torx/Star-head wrench, which is commonly used on automobiles and automated parts.
Strife Specibus: wrench kind
Fetch Modus: build it. Whack it with a wrench into its built.
Ah, this is where the Engie reference comes in. Hmm…. Maybe she can also temporarily upgrade items by hitting them more times, but if she hits them Too many times they’ll break? It puts a more interesting and carefully balanced mechanic here that makes the Build ‘Em Up (Break ‘Em Down cough cough Overwatch joke-) modus trickier to handle.
Symbol and meaning: Sagiza, from the extended zodiac
Derse and mind. Oooh… I’ll have to see how I feel about this as we keep going, but I’m definitely on board with derse.
How abouttt… machinaFeedback? Machina is of course a reference to her mechanical interests. There’s a company named Machina that makes wearable technology, and there’s also a gun named Machina in TF2 (though it’s a sniper gun and not an Engie gun it counts). It’s also a fun reference to her clown church intrigue, since deus ex machina means God From The Machine.
Feedback is partially a reference to how much she takes from other people and the sort of feedback loop she gets caught in- people respond well to her stealing personality traits, so she keeps doing it. But it’s also a reference to how many mechanical prostheses work- they rely on bodily feedback.
Quirk: not sure yet either
Now this is gonna start touching on some personality/appearance shifts I want to recommend for her… So if she’s worried about being boring, she’d definitely want to have an at least slightly visually interesting quirk?
So she could start her messages with ⇻ this symbol, maybe. She could replace b with 6, as a reference to six-headed wrenches. And maybe she could replace C with Ɔ=C, as a reference to wrenches?
Ex: ⇻The quiƆ=Ck 6rown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Special Abilities: super strength like most indigos
I can see where this would come from since peacocks are so like, flashy and vain… But I think I want to pull in something a bit more theme-appropriate? …What about a face-stealer? Think Koh from Avatar, but instead of just a centipede, maybe a little… like… Like a horse w/ 6 legs that also has the weird face-stealing centipede face? It could take on the faces of whoever it kills, in a Humanimal-like Aurthour, expect more terrifying.
Personality: Mekani is a happy go lucky troll- in public at least. She hates herself so much for being a boring person, so she absorbs the personalities of the people around her. She’s not that loyal except to one person. That’s Netabi, her matesprite. She saved her from death by attaching her head to a robot body.
I like this a lot. It’s an interesting foundation for a character. I think maybe you could push her a little further, though? Like maybe she’s a compulsive liar and tries to make up neat stories to make her life seem more interesting. Maybe she really goes whole-hog into her act and tries to seem Really Cool. You have her based off of Kazuichi, mildly, and pretending that punk persona in order to avoid ridicule is a big part of his character. So she could like to seem tough and in-control, too.
Interests: mechanics, robots, first person shooter games (sometimes in real life!) She does enjoy going to clown church with her matesprite, as she finds it very inspiring
Appearance: she’s based off of Kazuichi from Danganronpa and Engie from tf2. Her sprite was all custom made except for the mouth and eyes that was copy pasted.
I’m definitely gonna punk her up a little bit, but we’ll hit that in a second. I’d love to know where the eyes and mouth were taken from. Hmmm. The shape of the eyes reminds me of Meenah’s goggles, almost?
I thiiink Thief of Heart might be a more interesting way to go for her. She’s definitely a character who is obsessed with identity, who is very concerned with her Own identity. And so the role of actively stealing heart, of taking the soul and the personhood for herself and making it her own is one she would fall into a little too easily. I think that’s where the challenge would come for her, is learning to Not utilize this power in this way. Because the urge is so strong she could easily doom herself and everyone around her with it if she’s not careful.
Her inverse would be Page of Mind, which is where I think I would’ve placed her if she was a mind player anyways. She’s someone who denies the logic around her and needs to learn to come into a more solid control of it.
Land: Land of Truth and Lies
I think this is a little TOO straightforward. Maybe the Land of Cloak and Countenance? It’s a land where nothing is as it seems. She’s forced to transverse a landscape where everything is ever-shifting, ill-defined. Nothing is ever satisfied with what it is. Each thing, each being, is constantly swiping defined form away from one another. She’ll think she sees a consort for a moment before the lands shift again and suddenly it’s traded form with a rock. For once, she is the only consistent thing on the planet. And she must help bring everyone back to themselves.
I still agree with Derse, which means her symbol would be!
Sagio. Anyways, design time!:
Hair: I mentioned this while discussing her in general, but I wanted to give her a more punk look- like she’s compensating for her more boring personality. So I gave her some more wild hair, obviously based off of Kazuichi’s own asymmetrical hairstyle.
Horns: The blockiness felt a bit wrong to me, so I edited them to be less blocky and more pointed, but they otherwise stayed the same.
Face/goggles: I adjusted the outline of the goggles to match the color of the jumpsuit for a more cohesive look. I edited the eyes slightly to make them seem more narrow. If she wants to seem like an interesting person, a mildly mysterious air seems appropriate! On the lifted-goggles sprite, I also adjusted the position of her mouth. It was too low there fsr.
Jumpsuit/symbol: I changed the outline to her blood color to make the whole thing pop more. Then I added a few more details on the jumpsuit. Pockets, seam lines, and, of course, her new symbol.
Shoes: I lightened and thickened the outline a little as well as changed the shoes to pure black, for more contrast.
Thank you for sharing! I hope my recommendations helped.
