You know those Ikesen plant boys AU I’ve been making for a while? I went a little Extra and made fake screenshots of a farming game AU with those plant boys.
The Nobu, Akechu, and Kanetsugu cheebs are made by Cybird. It’s for their 2023 April Fool thingy. You can go here to play (use phone browser, it won’t work on a PC). I made Hideyoshi and everyone else myself by copying the style.
I snuck in my fanmade character just for giggles. Kuki Yoshitaka is Motonari’s nemesis Nobu’s resident “pirate” minion and ship-builder, famous for his cannon-outfitted iron-plated warships :3 (you can see his non-pixel form here)
The farm and castle and town BGs made with various RPG Maker assets (but made in Photoshop), because I don’t want to manually draw them one by one.
I made the fake farming logo based on the WTF logo Cybird themselves made for the “Ikemen Sen-farming” April Fool LMAO:
This is such an annoyingly untranslatable pun LMAO, so I had to go with “Farming Sengoku” for the lack of better words. 戦穀 is still pronounced “Sengoku”, it’s just that 穀 means “grains”.
as an editor myself, i have to say it… we NEED more ikemen editors!! i’m starving here i can’t do this alone ahhh. especially ikepri and definitely more ikesen! the few of you who does make ikemen edits, just know i appreciate you!
Jumping off from this post, I think that the flatness of the MCs and the lack of plot diversity are the biggest downsides to the Ikemen apps.
Like, I get the thinking behind these decisions. The MCs are rather blank, so readers can easily self-insert. Her known traits are generic and traditionally associated with the feminine. She's good at cleaning and cooking. She practices compassion, she's very empathetic; she believes in the power of love and kindness. She has a happy mien and easily pleased. She endures hardship with a smile and is inexperienced with sex, desire, and "shameful" sexuality. She's the model "Angel of the House," who longs to be the helpmate for a man as he saves capitalism goes on his unique character journey. Women are Cybird's target audience, and these are traits women have been traditionally taught to have/practice/nurture.
There's nothing wrong with having these traits. In reality, women and their desires are just as diverse as any other gender's. Some people like being the nurturing house spouse. But it is stereotypical and boring to read 17+ times in a row. In Ikevamp, Leonardo's route holds my special regard because his MC has a backbone. She bites him back! She stands up for herself! The route delves into the harm of toxic positivity, and Leonardo encourages MC to not force herself to be happy all the time. Similar, I adore Seth's route not only for Seth but also because MC's owns her own sexual desire and revels in it.
Zooming out to the level of romance plot tropes, it gets kind of tedious how all these guys are Sad Boys. Like, in every route, MC discovers some sort of secret trauma and tragic backstory. Through the power of love, she "fixes" the Sad Boy and puts him on the Path of Healing. Like. Okay. Can one of these guys just be feral. Maybe he's rude and there's no tragic reason he's rude and MC can stick her foot up his ass. Arranged marriage where he's perfectly nice and all the conflict is external and MC has to deal with the awkwardness of falling in love with her own husband. What if he's an assassin because, idk, murder is fun and pays the bills, and MC has to grapple that sometimes humans like violence. jk that's the plot of fatal fidelity by rien gray it's so good you should read it
The point is, I would like some variety. Both on a story and character level AND on a gender and racial minorities level. What if black MC? What if female LI? What if trans LI?? More genderqueer LIs like Seth?? Could be good y'all
WELLP. Because Cybirb yoinked Magoichi and already made him a real character (even if just in Stage), I rebranded my hobo lord fanmade character as someone else.
This time it’s someone who is absolutely not famous at all, so yeehaw! I doubt anyone would grab him from me this time LOL.
Kazumasa is still a mercenary, but... this time he’s the one leading the Gun Monks (TM). If he has a route it would be like... IDK in the war meeting because Motonari brings guns again I guess Nobu goes “Hey call the Negoroshuu and tell them to make guns for us” or whatever.
MC: “Who them”
Akechu: “Monks with guns”
MC: “The wHaT”
Akechu: “Monks. With. Guns. Who. Makes. Guns.”
His “secret” is like, his ancestor is the so-called “first ninja” so he would be considered pretty shady sometimes (in my Ikesenverse version, not historically). Also because his folks are kind-of-monks the Nobu squad aren’t entirely sure he’s not in cahoots with Kennyo (they aren’t, this is just for Drama).
The ninja stuff will just be really funny, but useful for battle later I guess. Sasuke is interested. Everyone says “Sasuke, no”.
i do wonder if one reason i tend to go for the method of "kidnap a vague story idea and make expies of all the characters i think are relevant and make up something new and barely recognizable" instead of the much less complicated method of just "writing a fanfiction" is that i play fast and loose with lore details if i think they suck or are boring or just irrelevant and i have this very intense possibly irrational but maybe rational fear that if i write a i dunno. zelda fanfic and i dont get everything 100% right based off the official nintendo timelines that ive been ignoring since they came out that the fanbase is going to take me out back and put me down.