Did you know that Rivals of Aether has unique holiday alternate palettes for all twelve Rivals? I don’t quite remember which holidays are represented, but I do know that earlier this year, I got to see what the Valentine’s and Summer alternate palettes looked like, and I just HAD to show off a few of the Halloween alts because of how great the costumes are!
Here’s a good portion of the roster in their respective Halloween alts! Up until the moment you move, the Rivals have little costumes on, but the instant you start brawling, they dissipate into thin air (I would imagine because it would be rather tumultuous to animate each one), though whomever you play as will still keep their spooky alternate palette!
I think one of my favorites out of the eight you see above might be Absa in her witch costume— the colors are really nice and she just looks so darling! Zetterburn’s vampire costume is also quite cool and I’m sure you can imagine how loudly I laughed when I saw that Kragg’s costume is just a giant pumpkin.
Even Shovel Knight gets in on the action! This one is also one of my favorites because he is very clearly dressed as a certain scythe-swinging specter… he’s got the scythe down-pat, though it half-looks like he just threw a sliver of fabric over his helmet and called it a day. I would imagine going for the real deal might lead to some… unruly consequences from Specter Knight.
Though perhaps the real show-stealing costume belongs to Wrastor. Sure, Kragg going as an oversized pumpkin or Orcane in the typical ‘bedsheet ghost’ garb might be iconic, but then you have Wrastor, who’s dressed as…
QUINN?!
I vividly remember actually shouting “WHAT?!” when I got around to seeing Wrastor in a plague doctor mask and hat combo— I seriously was not expecting to see some plague doctor representation in Rivals of Aether, but to say that it was a pleasant surprise would be vastly underselling it. This is AWESOME.
Now, we wait until Christmas (Or Thanksgiving, I dunno if the latter has any unique alternate palettes) to see the next set of festive color schemes! And, because I haven’t said it yet…
The Rivals get together to spend their Friday night the only way they know how: a Rivals of Aether marathon! As it turns out, Absa is a lot better at fighting than her looks might lead on… but can she reign victor over the treetop vigilante, Maypul?
After completely missing the memo that part one had released through being right on time for the finale (Talk about character development), all four parts of Tales of Aether: Future Imperfect have been released, and with the finale having released today, Clairen’s story arc has finally concluded!
And all I can say after reading the finale is…
“Oh my god.”
More or less, Issue Four of Future Imperfect is Clairen’s reveal trailer rewritten to better fit a twenty-some page comic, and trust me when I say that the finale is nothing short of spectacular.Even with the fact that you already know exactly what’s going to happen if you’ve seen the reveal trailer, the finale reveals the true identity of the hooded figure that frees Clairen and sends her back to the past.
Of course, I’m not going to be delving into who that figure actually is, because it— no joke— is the single biggestplot twist known to man. I legitimately screamed “WHAT?!” when I first read it. I was NOT expecting it to be who it ended up being… man, it’s all so COOL.
Because of this, I’ve decided that, at some point in the near future (Imperfect. Wordplay + 100), I’m going to be writing a review of sorts of Future Imperfect, which will feature my trademark ‘multi-paragraph goings-on’ writeups as well as sharing a lot of the artwork that I really liked. I’m unsure if I want to also include a brief recap of each issue— that I’ll have to mull over— but rest assured it’s still going to be a really cool post when I get around to writing it!
In short, though, Tales of Aether: Future Imperfect was nothing short of an amazing experience through and through, and I’m just so thrilled that Clairen of all characters was treated to a comic adaptation detailing her lore to the most minute of details!!
And trust me, you’ll be seeing me going off about her appearances in Issue Four soon enough… you know where to find it.
We are already on our way on his motorcycle to the alter and become a Power Couple and that’s on period Late 20s Shinsou Hitoshi be my husband por favor
If the Fated AcolyteandQuincy T. Page are any indication, it’s no surprise that I love creating self-inserts that are designed as faithfully to their source material/time period as I can manage! And after discovering two games that would ultimately shape this blog into what it is today— Rivals/Lovers of Aether respectively— it only took a couple of days before I decided to design a self-insert for the Aether franchise.
And I did! … sort of.
Because designing a Rivals/Lovers of Aether self-insert would involve choosing an animal to base myself on as well as drawing him anthropomorphically as well as taking what I would come up with for his Rivals design and make a Lovers-accurate design based on it… the prospect of a Rivals/Lovers S/I was easier said than done.
However, I did have a general idea of what I wanted his character to be like for both iterations, and before long introduced Psycha, the Clairvoyant Enigma, to my blog in this post right here! It was after I uploaded this post that I began scouring the internet for inspiration on how to design an anthropomorphic sheep character, and while I did ultimately begin a sketch of Psycha’s Rivals counterpart…
It’s been a full year since the creation of Psycha’s Lovers of Aether design!
Personally, of all of the OCs and self-inserts that I’ve shown off on this blog, I think Psycha may very well be my ultimate favorite. While I make sure to design all of my self-inserts to have an aspect that I have— whether that means their personality or what they look like— I find that Psycha is the absolute closest to who I am as a person (Barring the fact that he’s a 4'10" sheep, of course).
So, some time after I began speaking of him more and more in various posts on this blog, I knew that I wanted to draw him again for the one year anniversary of the design of his Lovers of Aether iteration. I initially intended on drawing up a completed art piece of his Rivals of Aether iteration, which is pretty much finalized by now, though…
I think it’s safe to say that Psycha’s Lovers design is the definitive Psycha.
Some might notice two interesting details in this drawing of Psycha; firstly, he’s not wearing his usual blue plaid flannel. I realized when going into drawing him again that I had only drawn Psycha without it once, and that sketch didn’t even end up being posted. I figured I ought to draw him in just the t-shirt he wears underneath it for a change— it’s also the first time you get to see his full ‘Supaboy’ shirt design, which is modeled after the Super Famicom logo!
Secondly, proudly pinned to his chest is a heart-shaped bi flag pin. I decided to include this because, in all honesty, I didn’t start embracing the fact that I was bisexual until a little after I designed Psycha, which was when I knew for certain that I swung both ways in terms of gender attraction.
It’s kind of an unwritten rule at this point that all of my self-inserts are bisexual, though the most bi S/I of them all is for certain Psycha. Even in spite of his sheepishness, I feel as though he would be proud to show off who he is with such a pin, and it fits his design a lot better than I expected it to. Perhaps I’ll make it a permanent addition!
I’m really proud of this drawing of Psycha, seeing as in some ways it’s a fully realized version of this sketch, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about the process of this art piece of Clairen’s very canon love interest!
(As a side note… hey, Dan Fornace and @elranno, since it was decided to add the four new workshop rivals to the Rivals lineup… can we make Psycha canon to the Lovers universe for real?)
