What are your favourite dragon quest monsters across the entire series?
The first Dragon Quest Monsters game I've ever gotten to play wound up being the first one to leave out exactly the top three I looked forward to getting:
GIANTSLUG/MAULUSC: I'm pickier about slug and snail creatures than you maybe expect but I love the vapid drippy zombie face of the DQ slug. It perfectly captures the appeal of a slug as a monster, a mindless gooey thing that will just eat you without a care. And its classic color scheme is that of a Banana Slug!!
BELZEBUB: I am also picky about fly creatures; usually I want them to have the proboscis present in some way, and the correct number of wings (two). There's something I still love about the toothy mouth of Belzebub however, maybe the way it curls up between the eyes? It just does a good job capturing the feel of a fly's personality I guess.
DARKEYE/EYELASHER: eye creatures can also very easily feel a bit boring to me because I've just seen so, so many of them, but DQ's basic killer eyeball appeals to me a lot with its irregular fungus-like collection of tentacles. The little root branches on "top" are especially cool to me, and sometimes they're the bottom, because they represent where the eyeball attaches to either floors or ceilings! In a few games, they're even encountered as parasites inside bigger monsters!
I used to admire the guidebook to the first two DQ Monsters games as a kid but never had the games themselves, and never got around to any other DQ titles. I just spent my whole life waiting for just the right one where I'd finally get to assemble my three favorites, then finally this new one comes out and has to be the first time these three took a vacation :(
But, Dark Prince was at least nice enough to include exactly my next three favorites in the franchise. I went over them already in my DQM Dark Prince post but some people will see this post first so I will have to reintroduce them:
DROHL: droopy flappy membranous mollusk guys, honestly horrible looking in a great way. In 3d games it turns out their helmetlike head spirals in the back like a snail shell! Apparently they're meant to be troll-like beings.
LUNATICK: just a blue fleshy sac thing with gooey antennae, a bunch of tentacles (most of them segmented like worms!) and a little eyeball, perfect, no criticisms, also reminds me of what Berserk considers an "Incubus:"
(Don't worry, Berserk Incubus aren't sex monsters but monsters that give you nightmares and feed on the fear)
TAILEATER/MAD MOLLUSK: I love how pathetic their front face looks, and the whole shape is so pleasantly reminiscent of an abyssal sea cucumber of some kind.
SKULLROO/GUAARDVARK: I didn't even realize this was one of my top favorites until getting it in Dark Prince. It's an unpleasant wrinkly fat aardvark kangaroo thing that just always carries a human skull around. Its profile says they collect them and the one they carry is their favorite!
A lot of slightly lower favorites were also left out however, none of these are in Dark Prince but are very high up there to me:
PYURO: what is this thing? I don't know! Different games have categorized it as an insect or a plant. It's a furball with five eyes encircling a butterfly proboscis, two little legs and a big huge ring of flower petals behind it. Very xenobiology.
TONGUELLA: it's kinda like a dumpy, hairless sloth with an aardvark tail with a mushed-in dog face and a giant gross tongue. I guess I just like foul moist beasts. I wish this was a real mammal we had in the world, I bet it'd smell terrible. Feels like a perfect counterpart to Guaardvark.
SLURPERON: it's one tiny pitcher plant with a giant tongue and then it has cool reptilian eyes at the bottom end. So simple and so rad! A fun way to stylize a pitcher plant monster without ripping off Victreebel.
SICKLER: is a little tiny mantis in a robe, like the Tonberry from Final Fantasy but a mantis
RAGIN' CONTAGION: a newer one, a gooey vaporous cyclops ghost that represents disease. In its first appearance as a boss in the series the English localizers decided it should talk like Yosemite Sam. Sure why not!
So I like the new game and it gave me some new favorites like Skellyfish and new appreciation for some others, but oddly it only has my very middle all-time faves
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Grocery Store Blues - Chapter 1
Eddie Munson x f!reader/f!oc
He falls for the pretty girl with the pretty daughter in the cereal aisle.
or
Two tired hearts share a few bowls of Lucky Charms.
warnings | 18+ eventual smut, angst, the fluffiest of fluff, single young mom dynamic
How is it only Wednesday? It’s the middle of the week, but she feels like she’s been slogging through it for at least a month. She goes to class, she works, she goes and gets nasty looks when she’s late to daycare pick up, day in and day out. She knows there must be an end to this crawling time, but right now, pushing her grocery cart down the cereal aisle, the odds are looking dim.
Her girl felt warm to the touch when she picked her up this afternoon, too warm, and squirmy. Probably some sort of cold getting passed around on tiny hands and drippy noses. She’s droopy in the little seat in the cart, folding over in her puffy pink coat, cheeks a similar rosy hue. She’s feeling good enough to perk up when they near the technicolor boxes of sugary cereal, making grabby hands at the Lucky Charms.
She watches her daughter for a moment, a hiccup in time of pure loveliness, only snapping out of it when someone clears their throat.
“Excuse me, sorry.” A young man is trying to slip by her, she only now realizes she’s stopped in the middle of the aisle. He’s a blur of wild, long hair, and black denim, she hears the squeak of his sneakers. “Oh my god, sorry about that, just totally out of it for a second there.” He smiles at her as he turns around, leaning his hip on the end of her cart.
“No worries. I’m a big fan of Lucky Charms myself.” He nods to her girl, still looking enrapt at the animated Leprechaun on the front of the box.
“Oh jeez. I don’t usually let her have that, basically candy for breakfast. Wouldn’t bring me any wins in the mom Olympics.” She winces hard at her lame attempt at a joke. He just smiles wider. “Well you can’t be doing too bad, seeing how cute your little girl is. I’d give you a gold medal for sure.” Her daughter has shifted her attention to this stranger now, trying to twist back in her seat to get a better look at him. He waves at her, mouthing “hey, sweetheart.”
Even if he is a stranger, she beams at his kind words, that rolling pride for her daughter buoying her. But just as quick, she drops back into reality, the reality that she probably couldn’t even buy the cereal if she wanted to, considering it’s the end of the month and she’s giving her wallet a herculean stretch already.
She clears her throat, “sorry again for being in the way, total mom brain of me.” He tilts his head at her, furrowing his brow a bit, “no apologies needed, made up for it by letting me meet this little lady.” He wiggles his eyebrows at her contorting daughter and gets a high pitched giggle out of her, before turning his attention back to her, “have a good night.”
“You too,” she watches his back as he keeps on down the aisle before quickly averting her gaze to the shelves, not totally understanding why she feels so flustered.
By the time she gets to the checkout lane, she’s got a massive headache. Her girl has dissolved into tears, and feels even warmer than when she first picked her up. As the cashier starts ringing her up, it turns into the worst kind of puzzle. How many things can she buy without leaving her wallet empty. She has to put several things back and can hear the older woman in line behind her pointedly clearing her throat. Just at that moment, her daughter starts to wail, she thinks she might start too.
After that trial by embarrassment, it’s all she can do to get out to her car. She hoists her girl out of the shopping cart, keeping her on her hip while she loads the grocery bags into the trunk. Her daughter presses her soppy face into her neck, and she murmurs comfort into the top of her head.
“I know, pops. We’re going home. We’ll get you all cleaned up, lovely. Get some food and medicine in you. It’s ok, baby, please don’t cry.” She’s struggling with her squirrely girl and the bags, and ends up dropping one. She curses silently, trying to bend at the waist with a toddler clinging to her like a wet blanket. A pair of familiar sneakers comes into view.
“Here, let me help you with that.” It’s the man from the cereal aisle. He bends down, gathering up the bag and the last few in her cart, tucking them into her trunk. He’s holding onto two bags of his own, but holds the one out to her, she can see in it some of the items she had put back.
For a moment, she feels panic rise in her throat. He saw that, oh god, so much for that gold medal. But then she looks at his face, and his brown eyes are so soft they quiet that rising fear.
“I know what it’s like, doing the end of the month cash register dance. I hope this is ok.” She’s still frozen in place, so he smiles, and places the bag in her trunk with the rest of her groceries.
“I’m Eddie, by the way, forgot to mention that earlier.” She finally picks her jaw up off the ground, holding out her hand for him to shake, telling him her name. She tries to coax her daughter’s face out of her neck, but to no avail.
“And this quiet little thing is Poppy. She’s usually not so shy, just not feeling her best at the moment.” She has no clue why she feels the need to tell him that, but again, he meets it with a smile.
“It’s real nice to meet you. You usually come to the grocery on Wednesday nights?” She looks at him, a bit confused. He laughs, “well, it’s just, I don’t usually shop on Wednesdays, just had to pick some stuff up, you know? But, I might have to change my schedule around if it means running into you two ladies more often.” That drags a giggle out of her that she’s downright embarrassed by, but he grins big at it.
“Um, well, yeah. I guess we do usually come Wednesday nights.” He nods at this, a newly shy smile on his face, “maybe I’ll see you next Wednesday then.”
“Maybe you will.”
“Alright.”
“Alright.”
They both laugh a little, and just then a car honks somewhere in the parking lot, pulling them out of whatever world they were both just in.
He nods at her one more time before walking off. She lets out a sigh she didn’t know she was holding onto.
When she gets home that night, daughter curled up on the couch as she puts away the groceries, she sees that Eddie included something in that bag that she hadn’t put back. There’s a box of Lucky Charms, and on it in black sharpie, a phone number and a note.
To the prettiest lady I’ve ever seen in a grocery store (and her equally pretty girl),
It’s not a gold medal, but I think these are better.
Call me, I’ll bring the milk.
Eddie
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Dandie's just staring at that droopy, doughy-looking pizza man. Her ears are craned back, her tail is low, and she is not moving a muscle. It looks like Papeeno, but it smells...d i f f e r e n t.
Something smells like yeast, tomatoes, and bell peppers.
Something is gooey, drippy, sticky.
Something has its back turned as it busily powders itself with some sort of white dust - flour? It's working the dust into its body, and very quickly its body ceases melting.
Something turns, just a bit, as it moves to put down the bag of flour in its hands-- and for a second, it sees.
Something whips around in surprise.
"Ohhh!" WOW those are big eyes - but if anything, Fake just looks astonished! It hadn't even noticed this... er... huh. It doesn't know what that is. (Sorry, Dandie.)
(Also, good lord, it sounds a lot like that Peppino guy.)
"S-sorryy!"
(Nevermind.)
"YooU scared mme. Hellooo! It's nice to mmeet you! Ii amnot in the besst spot to-o make pizzas rright now!"
That is, Fake isn't currently in its 'abandoned' manor.
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Got bored
Drew a sad drippy boy (click him, he has tiny details I'm sure Tumblr quality is gonna destroy)
He's an OC of mine from a very vivid dream I had a few months back (yes it's stuck with me this long lol)
Went way too hard on the skull and had no detail spoons left for the clothes lol maybe I'll mess with them a bit later 😆 (his shoulders are killing me help...though I do like my droopy skull)
Anyways he and (we find out much later) his lady love were cursed to be apart. A wizard (?) dude cursed skully man here to sleep for [insert long enough time for bone-ification in the desert] half in and half out of the water, so his face/brain/memories would be gone when he woke up, but his lower half would remain intact under the water (where he now draws his life force from, he can't be out long) so he could move around and speak but be otherwise miserable!...horray!
The one hole in his shirt shows off some mummified muscle still stuck to the bone, he had one arm out of the water so it's gone (he can barley use it) and you can see barnacles and sucker fish bites on the skin his decaying clothes exposed to the water
He and this mermaid have a beef cause he creepily hangs out under the water, just holding still while he recharges, and is just generally in the way.
Yes the mermaid is his cursed lady love
Yes she figures it out eventually
Yes it was a horribly sad dream and it will not leave my brain
Mightdrawmoreeventuallyokbye
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