Welcome to the introduction to a serie I will call "Overthinking & Worldbuilding".
This page contains different elements :
The preface is a little introduction of why I am creating this serie, and to make it clear my... pelicular relation with this setting and community.
Then come the basic concept, wich are the knowledges to have in mind when reading the specifics subject in the part after and that can be applied to all of them.
(It's important to know I have litteraly no idea where I am trying to go with this concept.)
Preface
I hate this community, I don't hate everyone, but I can say without flinching that 70% of people here are complete helpless idiots. Not the best way to begin is it? I don't really care.
I love MGE however, I really do... For the most part at least, I really don't like the "litteraly everything want to lewd" part, it's uniteressing as hell...
So why am I making this? Well I was minding my own buisness, when I noticed in the comment section of the Centaur the biggest display of stupidity I ever saw in this community yet.
You can check it out yourself, but basically the thread was going like "The Centaur on the artwork don't have big boobs, therefore Centaur can't have big boobs, what a shame.". And everyone was one by one aggreeing with him and reinforcing the sentence, until Zel(bless this man) interfer. Big shout out to him for keeping his cool because I clearly wouldn't.
The profile NEVER mention anything about their breasts, yet everyone assume they just have the same body type than the official artwork... Seriously? You think all Centaur have all the exact same bodytype, the exact same hairs, the excat same horse part, the exact same personnality and all?
It's basically like saying that the succubus is bad because she can't have hair an other color than blue! Mamono have individual differences, not only it is obvious, but KC have stated it many times. This is one of the most essential and basic concept of MGE!
In this group of idiots there was even peoples like Hound that is here for more than 6 years, and yet he seemingly have no understanding how the basic concepts of MGE work. In fact, they were even adding up that sub species like Unicorn had bigger breasts (on the artwork obviously), and didn't think a single moment that maybe, just maybe it was hinting them that Centaur can have bigger breasts...
I hate this community, I really do, most of you are so stupid, it's crazy. You guys are just looking at the pictures and not reading any of the informations are you?
But I am not here to "insult" you, I just decided to write a concept I have in mind for a long time, so maybe, you will improve your creativity, and I hate being that guy that think he is doing eveything better than everyone and want to grace them with his knowledge. It just happened that you guys are at the bottom point, you seem to have almost no idea how to imagine possibilities and what you are suppose to actually understand from the profile.
Introduction
The concept is simple : Explore the possibilities MGE offer. I can't draw, I can't write stories, but I am simply going to try to write in the more informative way what is the possibiliies and limit a mamono, or a concept of MGE offer.
Don't get me wrong, I completly understand that in short stories people just have their mamonos look exactly like the official profile and artwork describe, there is nothing wrong with that, after all, it's why peoples will be here for in a way.
However when you want to have a larger populations of mamono, or just want to be more original, thinking about what you can and can't do is important. I know most people think "of course I can already do that" but seeing shit thread like the one of the Centaur is litteraly telling me the opposite.
However, at the end of the day, all those informations are nothing but my opinion, I don't pretend to have the right or better way to think or create, but here we are talking about people that seemingly simply don't think at all.
Basic concepts
It's been stated times and times again, all mamono have individual differences. A good example of how diverse a same specie of mamono can be is the succubus notebook, even if succubus are quite generic, there is so much informations, it help to put in perspective the profile. From the profile of the succubus, look at all the things the notebook tell you is possible, now imagine for others mamono.
I'm not going to go really deeper in that part, but KC often refer to the fact there is exception, like a busty Baphomet or a breastless Holstaur, I am not going to take those exception into account, I am only trying to explore what can be naturraly possible in MGE.
Before trying to imagine what you can do with the profile, you need to understand how the profiles are written, with wich mindset.
Close your eyes just a second, and try to briefly imagine a centaur, not a MGE one, a generic one, I am almost certain it had a brown horse part build like a horse race. Now imagine a lizardman, I am certains it's scale were green.
All the mamono described in the artwork embrace purposely the most cliché and generic aspects of there orignal myth, because that's the point after all, seeing the generic monster as monster girls. The Dragon have green scales, because it's that cliché green dragon we saw so much in ours childhood, the Elf is dressed in all green, the Amazon have tanned skin to embrace the "exotic" aspect of the myth, the Dyrad have green hair because tree, the mucus toad as well is green, because frog tend to be pictured as green, and the list go on.
Of course it's not the case of all the mamonos, but you got the idea.
The real difficulty is trying to draw a line between what we can change, and what we can't. For example, Mantis are all green, and it's extremly unlikely it can be changed, it could probably be different shade of green, but couldn't be replaced by a completly different color.
More complicated now : The Mad Hatter, can we change her outfit colors? In the original story, the Mad Hatter was green, but it's not the same universe anymore, they are part mushroom now. So is green outfit in the artwork just a nod to the original myth, or an actual rule to set to all the Mad Hatter? Now that's a very good question. I will probably go deeper in that kind of case in a dedicated sub part.
Now we kind of understand how the profile are thinked, we can start the fun part (That almost no one ever bother with), molding our character.
Let's say we want to create a characters : A Lizardman This is quite a generic mamonos that give a lot of freedom, I am aware not all of mamono give that much possibility, but most definetly do.
It may be questionnable, but to me the first thing to know for creating those monsters/characters is : Where/how did they live? It will literraly affect everything they are, once you got that a lot of things will simply flow along. I identifie 3 layers of context that should take into account that each impact the next one (Yes I have my own chart/referential for a lot of theses things, if you plan to keep reading you will need to get used to that)
| Biome context | The context of the biome/country, did they live in a volcanic region, in the middle of a desert or in green plain? This layer will determine what are the ressources avaiables, and what are the direct foes/animal the character know and is used to fight. |
|---|---|
| Social context | Directly influenced by the biome context, it will determine in wich solcial group the character live in. It can be their city or village, or simply the social group they belong to. This will set what are the habits, culture and traditions of the characters. This layer will distinguished the characters from the other in the same biome context. |
| Personnal context | Directly influenced by the social context, this is the individual personnality of the character, it will define its very personnality, its past, its taste, etc... This layer will distinguished the characters from the others in the same social context. |
So you probably understood it go from the bigger to the smaller, let's apply it to create our character.
For the biome context, I want my Lizardman to live in desert, after all some lizards do live in desert. I am going to go slightly further and say it's a reg, a rocky desert, not an erg, the usual sandy desert described in the encyclopedia, so no pyramids their Pharao and all the related mamono, no Sandworms as they couldn't navigate in such a desert. Just from that I can etablished that my character will have taned skin and her scale will be a darker greyish brown, because there is no reason her scales couldn't be a different color, especially if she come from a different region.
Also, I will etablished that this 'kind' of Lizarmen have scale less 'smooth' than the one showed in the profile pic, and that give a more agressive look, to resonate with the rustic/dry up side. (And because I personnaly like it)
Now the social context : The biome is harsh and merciless, I will say that the Lizarmen lives in village that are located between big elevation of rocks, to profit from the sahdes, even partially carved in the stone.
There is not a lot of plants, so they mostly hunt animals for food, making the great hunters, the fact they live in a reg grant them acess to a lot of ores, wich is convenient because Lizardman are warriors and it will allow them to forge weapons and armours. So for now we have our village of Lizarmen, their weapons are made of good ores, their clothing is mainly made of animal leathers they hunt, but they still have access to some rustic fabric, and the warriors have armours, but since it's a desert and that they are monster, they only wear the strict necessar amount of armour.
Since this example is already way too long, I am not going to go the cultural impact too much, but let's just say the warriors ornate their weapons and cloths of bones and skulls from their biggest hunted (animal) games, a way to display their skills to others, and they take great pride in it, or something like that.
Ok, now the personnal context, I am going to spare you an entire backstory, I am mostly concetrating on the appearance of our character here, if you couldn't tell. Additionnaly from what was said in the first part, she will have short white hair, an armour made of leather that cover the top of her body, her pelvis and the top of her leg but leave her belly exposed (because heat), the armour posses a breasplate made of iron. She wear no helmet but wear a big animal skull on her head (A bit like the Hight Orc). Her main weapon will be a long sword whose pommel is actually some kind of animal bone.
Ok, this was way more long and detailed that I originally expected, "overthinking" is not in the title for nothing.
But here you are, with a bit of thinking, you have an individual mamono that look almost nothing like the original artwork, and that make a decent amount of sense, in fact you can take the social context I just made and create a bunch of different characters from there. Of course she still will marry whoever defeat here, the blabla in the profile, and I didn't even defined her personnality, it's just a rushed example.
As I've said previsously, I didn't except anyone to dig that much, even less in a short story, it's completly understandable to just have a Lizarman that look almost alike what the profile describe (If it's a short story and/or there only one Lizarman), but there is a lot of possibilities, and seeing people that can't even consider that individuals can have different breast size is just desolating.
This whole things is already way too long, I don't think I have to explain 'big concept' anymore, so here a rushed lists of things to keep in mind, for the others subpart.
Elements that can alway be changed :
- If the skin color is human like and it's not stated otherwise, alway assume it can be any humanly color, Angel, Lizardman, Werecat can have taned skin, and Girtabillu, Ghoul and Mummy can have pale skin.
- Even if the skin is from a specific color, the skin can be a different tint of it.
- Mamonos that live in village, like Amazon or Ocelomeh, will tend to have different traditions and cultures from a village to another, but it will stay accurate to their core value described in the profile.
- Some mamono are isolated because they are agressive, but they are also agressive because they are isolated, they will jump any man because it became a very rare opportunity for them. When one of those mamono is integred in a society, she have no reason to roam around and attack any single man she spot, since there is single men everywhere. She will still remain 'agressive' especially if she get a liking to particular man.
- Any mamono can be bad, just like any of them can be good, if you could stop making Dark Elf and Orc the antagonist of your stories, that would be great.
[I will add more of those generality later]
Advanced subjects
In those blogs, I will go in details about specific mamono or specific family of monster. Generally, the blog will summarise what we can take from the profile, after that what can be changed in their appearance then in their personnality. After that it will probably depend what I feel like to put in there, but I will generally end with a rough description of examples characters to illustrate what have been said before.
[WIP]
[Next is going to be Harpy... Probably...]