just some character shitt for future things i may want to do
I think the cornflakes characters would work better as a dynamic if instead of being strict to the comic lore, i just started all over, start all over at a point in time where they've all known eachother a while. i kind have basically been using this oversimplified outline for their characters when i think of them anytime now aside for the Other comic ive been working on on my patreon, which is just a weird nebulous Thing.
derek the dog wasn't always a dog, sometimes he wishes he weren't bitten by a weredog all those years ago, but he's come to embrace his doggyness, he sees no point in being hung up about the past. Derek is functionally an optimist, he's also really annoying and not in a cute spongebob way, he's a socially inept frat-reject douche, real immature. bunjee contrasts this by taking Dereks metaphor of Bad Thing happened to you that changed you a lot and making it literal, but he's incapable of moving past it, he comes off as the smarter and more reserved one from a subsurface glance but he's just a bitter, neurotic, sad little man. I want to make it clear how both of them are gullible and hopeless. theyre both vaguely victims of The Forces of Evil but derek doesn't question the way things are, and is just happy to live the closest approximation to the status quo. bunjee ruminates and festers, bunjee is more afraid and thinks theres more to be afraid of than there really is. bunjee tries to overcorrect this by letting impulsive and destructive tendencies get the best of him when he's vulnerable. bunjee doesn't see dereks pain as real, he sees him as too stupid to feel pain, a total rube or NPC, but he's so so jealous. Derek represents everything Bunjee wants for himself, and he wants to be stupider but doesn't realize he already is as stupid. just in different ways. god damn it this basically is a spongebob and squidward thing isnt it.
dusty fits into this by showing another response to trauma (i hope its clear by trauma i don't mean anything in specific, it could be events in their lives to just living in their comically surreal evil world, don't make fun of me man) that isn't moving on OR rocking-back-and-fourth-levels of neurosis, but detachment. If their world is chaos then dusty tries to match it, where as derek is passive to it, and bunjee spirals inwardly. Dusty doesn't put on a front of happiness but he is indeed chemically impaired over half the time, the rest of the time he's really badly grappling with the side effects of letting shit fester in the background for so long, he's wiser than the other two though.
All of these characters are capable of matching each others energy, two on two, in given circumstance, they all have overlap and they have hard barriers. contrasting and complimentary existences as one unit
none of this really gets into how they feel about each other beyond how bunjee feels about derek because i haven't fleshed out how dusty contrasts/compliments the other two nearly enough in my mind, and i'm not confident in what i do have. the gay shit wouldn't be as massive or monumental i can tell you that much but it would be a turning point. wouldn't make dusty as outwardly hateful to derek and would make dusty a little meaner to bunjee. the gay shit would feel better that way anyways. even the playing field.
smith would just straight up not exist if i could do it over again. i don't know why i added him into cornflakes comic to start, he's pretty funny with derek at least but beyond existing for the sake of it i don't find him useful as a fourth main character anymore.
i'll probably edit this as i figure out how to articulate more. it feels gay to just put it out there because i don't want the few cornflakes fans taking it the wrong way. i feel gay for typing that too, like im on some high horse, ohhhh here's my epic character lore isn't it just sooo realll. not that serious
