It shouldn't be that serious but I haaate people summarizing Simon and his struggles in Fionna and Cake as the symptoms of one mental illness or another. Like, his struggle with being content now that he's Simon again echo depression and he very well may have it. The way I've seen some people examine his character and conflict through a pathological lens, though, just picks out what words and actions they can diagnose as some documented and studied condition. They divorce his character and conflict from his setting, his time as the Ice King, and how he fits in the extended narrative of Adventure Time.
Simon is a pre-mushroom bomb era human in a post-mushroom bomb world. The people he knew, the surroundings he's come to understand, and the life trajectory he had going are all long gone. He's come to in a new society where things function in much more fantastical, irrational, and advanced ways. He's been a part of this society- even shaping it- as the Ice King, and now he must continue playing into the happenings of Ooo as Simon Petrikov. The new civilizations are alien, the new Earth functions by new social and natural laws, and he has the remains of new life that disgusts, horrifies, and humiliates him.
Simon spent almost a thousand years as a man stripped of his former values, dignity, and cognisance. As the Ice King, he lost his ability to control himself, and inflicted what would accumulate to be significant harm unto others. He learned how to get along with others by the end of his time as the Ice King, but those years were a blip in the span of a near millennium, and the degree of self-control he learned was basic decency. Simon spent his life before the mushroom bomb developing to be a composed and academic man, and endured having his antecedent personal growth and his own autonomy regarding his identity nullified by the ice crown.
Adventure time is a fantasy show that explores the consequences of the endless possibilities inherent to a fantastical setting. Powerful magic and magical existences destroy and ruin lives, abundances of mystical organisms amount to exhausting effort to defend oneself from danger, and the lack of predictability of what the world has to offer someone next spells out a compromised sense of security and stability.
Simon/the Ice King's story is one example of the show's exploration of the undesirable side of fantasy, and one story that's been built on for over eight years now. It's a story with circumstances unique to the show, with numerous writers informing its contents, with some parts planned and some spontaneous. It's a charged story, and it's narratively reductive to effectively whittle Simon's character and conflict as the showing of a real world mental illness
Now, it's been gone over how Dragalia Lost actually used quite a bit of inspiration from one of Cygames' previous works, Knights of Glory, for anything from character designs to dragons.
Of course, this showed up quite literally with characters like Lea when they quite literally just had the "Knights of Glory" showcase, but it also showed up in characters ranging from Jakob to Mikoto to Jurota (also showcasing the alighting butterfly blade, also in Dragalia):
However funny it is to see who we came to know as different characters in a different media, though, the dragons are 10x funnier to look at.
You see, it seemed that Knights of Glory had a certain 'evolution system' to dragons, where they'd develop and grow more fancy, if they weren't inexplicably transforming into an attractive humanoid woman because of course-
And oh boy, we can kinda see alternative evolutionary paths for the Greatwyrms.
There's Midgardsormr, who seems to most closely resemble the fully evolved form from the start...(he also gained an element, as this dragon line apparently has no element!)
Mercury, who is in her middle phase:
Imagine a hydra Mercury!
...Brunhilda? Not very sure on this one. She might just be a new design, but here's my best guess for what dragon they might have been inspired from:
Of course, in her 'final form' if this was a dragon they used as inspiration.
Jupiter, whom I'd almost put in his middle stage for closeness of design:
Last but not least, poor Zodiark, who really got hammered with the skeletal dragon design and is also in his middle stage and is also drooling 24/7:
Where is his stomach? Where are his organs? Why is he bipedal?? He lost some bulk in his transition to Dragalia, too. Honestly, I like Dragalia Zodiark more than his inspiration here.
That's enough of full evolutionary trees for now, though.
Some other funny ones to me include:
-Silke turning into a skeletal horse on her final evolution:
-Baby Leviathan going :-D all the time:
-Baby Poseidon (honestly a lot of the babies are funny since we only knew their final forms, typically);
-Possibly Cat Sìth inspiration???
-Baby Zephyr:
-Baby Nidhogg, sitting all prim and proper and ready to watch Euden die still:
-Teenage...Satan? Having a evil little :) face going on there...
Speaking of, quite a few of the dragons were actually repurposed into bosses, as with Satan above, like everyone's favorite:
(We must not let Phraeganoth be revived! ...Until Bondforged Zethia's story, at least).
Might be a stretch here, but maaaaaybe a bit of Kai Yan in here?
The Hypnos/Thanatos/Mega Monarch Emile line's general design:
This is getting long enough as it is, but if you want to see a mix of some old with a lot of new art that they might have used as inspiration for more dragons/adventurers, here's the link I used to the collections of KoG artwork that people were able to preserve:
I found an animatic version of the Lost on Mars opening scene in the game’s files!
The original video was silent so I added the dialog (but not any music or sound effects). I also had to partly change the speed of the video to synchronize it with the audio.
I think it’s funny that they included this in the files, but I’m happy they did because I love early/behind-the-scenes content :)
SABAN MOON HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN FOUND, I REPEAT SABAN MOON HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN FOUND
I recommend everyone watch this and part 1 in full especially sailor moon fans, but specifically for the pilot its at 1:43:45. I did not even think we would ever see the entire thing. This is MASSIVE